Polygyny: Difference between revisions
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== Historical evidence == | == Historical evidence == | ||
Humans are a moderately polygynous species. In the Ethnographic Atlas, of 1,231 societies noted, 588 had frequent polygyny, 453 had occasional polygyny, and only 186 were fully monogamous. Even fewer, just 4 were polyandrous. Hence, 84.6% of societies were at least mildly polygynous. | Humans are a moderately polygynous species. In the Ethnographic Atlas, of 1,231 societies noted, 588 had frequent polygyny, 453 had occasional polygyny, and only 186 were fully monogamous.<ref>Grey, JP. 1998. ''Ethnographic Atlas Codebook'', derived from George P. Murdock's ''Ethnographic Atlas'' recording the marital composition of 1231 societies from 1960 to 1980. [[https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoAtlas.pdf Article]]</ref> Even fewer, just 4 were polyandrous. Hence, 84.6% of societies were at least mildly polygynous. | ||
In traditional societies, men's reproductive variances are approximately 2–4 times those of women. Also the highest lifetime [[reproductive success]] is over 1000, whereas the female maximum is 69, which implies greater sexual inequality for men. In average forager societies, 21% of married women are married polygynously.<ref>https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119125563.evpsych113</ref> | In traditional societies, men's reproductive variances are approximately 2–4 times those of women. Also the highest lifetime [[reproductive success]] is over 1000, whereas the female maximum is 69, which implies greater sexual inequality for men. In average forager societies, 21% of married women are married polygynously.<ref>https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119125563.evpsych113</ref> | ||
Women may have reproduced twice as often as men throughout history as a result.<ref>https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill#Before_.27enforced_monogamy.27.2C_women.27s_effective_population_size_was_up_to_17x_larger_than_men.27s</ref> | Women may have reproduced twice as often as men throughout history as a result.<ref>https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill#Before_.27enforced_monogamy.27.2C_women.27s_effective_population_size_was_up_to_17x_larger_than_men.27s</ref> | ||
Women prefer partnered men over single men which may be related to women's preference for high status, but may also be an adaption of women living in harmes.<ref>http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/umi-okstate-2649.pdf</ref><ref>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109001048</ref><ref>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1660608/</ref> | Women prefer partnered men over single men which may be related to women's preference for high status, but may also be an adaption of women living in harmes.<ref>http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/umi-okstate-2649.pdf</ref><ref>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109001048</ref><ref>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1660608/</ref> | ||
==Relation to female hypergamy== | == Relation to female hypergamy == | ||
Assuming there was no significant shortage of men in human history, polygamy meant high status men drew from the mating pool of men with equal or lower status than their own. Thus, lower stutus men went empty-handed or had to marry less desirable women. It could thus be assumed that women's mate preferences were selected such that they desire men of high status and make use of opportunites to date up, that is, in addition to selection pressures stemming from women's resource dependence on men and their need for protection as the weaker sex especially from coersive low quality men ([[bodyguard hypothesis]]).<ref>https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-5985-6_21</ref> Thus women's hypergamous mating preference may not merely stem from necessity, but also from opportunity. | |||
Thus, polygyny naturally ties in with the topic of hypergamy as women's greater choosiness, and their greater tendency to demand a potential romantic partner to have resource provision capabilities or high social status compared to men, implies an overall tendency for women to date up and for [[harem]]s to form when hypergamous foids accumulate at the top of the male [[dominance hierarchy]]. | |||
== Resource-defense polygyny vs mate-defense polygyny == | |||
In more primitive times, polygyny was presumably rather about single men's ability to guard their female mates by brute force, resembling polygynous mating behavior found in our closest relatives such as chimps and bonobos<ref>http://web.missouri.edu/~flinnm/courses/mah/lectures/sd.htm</ref> with more brute and primitive societies also showing higher rates of polygyny.<ref>https://d-place.org/parameters/B019#2/-0.4/163.3</ref> Such mate-defense polygyny is presumably also grounded in sex differences in [[Bateman's principle|parental investment]], causing men to grow larger and stronger in [[intrasexual competition]] and resulting in females to prefer large males who can protect them ([[bodyguard hypothesis]]). Species with large sexual dimorphism generally tend to be "tournament species" in that the males compete ruthlessly for access to high quality females,<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_(zoology)#Tournament_species</ref> allowing the most dominant males to secure many females at once, i.e. engage in polygyny. | |||
Modern polygyny is, on the other hand, is rather enabled by men's wealth rather than their brute force,<ref>https://doi.org/10.1086/202775</ref> presumably as men's superior strength and independence from reproductive burdens allowed them to extract much more resources, thus creating a resource dependence and pushing women to use whoring to get access to them, e.g. by flashing their genitals or [[boobs]] when a rich or large male approached as can be observed in online media on GoneWild, Twitter and OnlyFriends. | |||
There is evidence that traits involved in both these types of polygyny co-evolved at some point in human's evolutionary past. For example, there is an, although weak, correlation between height and intelligence. This association may be due to women selecting for men that could provide both superior physical protection and access to resources in human's evolutionary past, as intelligence is moderately associated with SES in modern societies and would likely have also been associated with provision potential in more primitive societies, though perhaps to a lesser degree, due to the much greater cognitive demands of most jobs in modern society. | |||
== Enforced monogamy as means of self-domestication == | |||
Enforced monogamy, e.g. marriage institutions, may have been culturally evolved, at least in part, to counter the natural human tendency for the wealthiest, most dominant, highest status men to hoard a disproportionate amount of fertile young women and alleviating a number of social ills caused by it.<ref>https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill#Monogamy_may_have_been_selected_by_cultural_evolution_because_of_its_benefits_for_society</ref> This issues are for example, lower-status males observed in various species to band together to [[beta uprising|socially censure]] polygynous men, the inhibition of economic and social development due to concordant demotivated incel men,<ref>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002719859636</ref><ref>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470491000800205</ref> men in societies with large amounts of polygyny finding it increasingly difficult to guard their mates from the more sexually deprived non-polygynous men, or there being a 'wealth threshold' wherein greater economic inequality results in fewer men being able to meet the bar required to support women in polygynous marriages,<ref>https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2018.0035#RSIF20180035F1</ref> or a mix of any or all of these factors. | |||
An example of this would be the fact that a man's social status is positively associated with his potential fertility and ability to become polygynous, that is, that wealthier and higher status men have a much greater 'potential' copulation frequency. Status was in fact found in one large scale study to explain up to 62% of the variance in men's potential copulation frequency, much higher than the typical effect sizes for other male traits in relation to this topic in psychology.<ref>https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill#Men.27s_social_status_accounts_for_62.25_of_the_variance_of_copulation_opportunities</ref><ref>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-019-09354-4</ref> | An example of this would be the fact that a man's social status is positively associated with his potential fertility and ability to become polygynous, that is, that wealthier and higher status men have a much greater 'potential' copulation frequency. Status was in fact found in one large scale study to explain up to 62% of the variance in men's potential copulation frequency, much higher than the typical effect sizes for other male traits in relation to this topic in psychology.<ref>https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill#Men.27s_social_status_accounts_for_62.25_of_the_variance_of_copulation_opportunities</ref><ref>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-019-09354-4</ref> | ||
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== Growing acceptance of polygamy == | == Growing acceptance of polygamy == | ||
According to a 2017 survey by Gallup, the acceptance of polygamy is on the rise with now 17% of U.S. American's being accepting of it.<ref>https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/214601/moral-acceptance-polygamy-record-high-why.aspx</ref> There is also evidence of increased sexual inequality as summarized in the [[hypergamy]] article and the [[Scientific Blackpill]]. | According to a 2017 survey by Gallup, the acceptance of polygamy is on the rise with now 17% of U.S. American's being accepting of it.<ref>https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/214601/moral-acceptance-polygamy-record-high-why.aspx</ref> There is also evidence of increased sexual inequality as summarized in the [[hypergamy]] article and the [[Scientific Blackpill]]. | ||