Human Sexuality and the "Double Standard"
One revelation that I had at some point in my life is that for men, having children (the significant outcome of mating) is fundamentally different than it is for women in one important way. If you're a woman, there's no doubt which children are yours. They come out of your body, and nobody can make you doubt that it's your child. (Neglecting such things as mixing up babies in the hospital nursery or such.) On the other hand, if you're a man, you're taking someone's word for it.
Now of course in modern times, we have DNA testing that can set such doubts to rest, but that has not existed throughout the evolutionary history of our species, and therefore has not factored into our psychological makeup.
So what is the significance of this astounding fact? Well, it has a great deal to do with how males and females react to infidelity. If you're a female and your mate is unfaithful, it threatens your security, and perhaps your self esteem, but it doesn't threaten the identity of your children, nor does it cast doubt on whether in fact you even have any children. If you're male, on the other hand, infidelity means you are investing your efforts in a dubious cause. You may be raising someone else's children.
Now if you believe in evolution, you know that traits that result in people's genes being transmitted to the future are naturally reinforced, and visa versa. So, men in the past that were content to devote their reproductive efforts to a woman who had sexual contact with other men weren't likely to pass along their genes to anyone. The result is that men have evolved with very strong reactions to infidelity. To a man, there are two basic responses to this. One is to insure that the rival never intrudes again. Kill him in other words. And our statistics about murder bear this out. In many cultures, a man who kills a rival who has engaged in sex with his wife is not even held to have committed a crime. The other and more common reaction is what I call the breaking of the mated bond. The man loses his connection with his unfaithful mate and abandons her.
Now women may find this hard to really relate to, but just consider that you have a baby and the people at the hospital take it to the nursery just after it is born, before you really see it so you can identify it. Let's say you're severely stressed by the birth and in no condition to recieve the baby immediately. So now you recover and you say, "I'd like to see my baby, please." And the nurse says, "Well, um, we kind of mixed up the babies in the nursery. Someone forgot to tag them, but I think this one is yours." I'm sure you as a woman would not be motivated to near violence by this, would you? Imagine that there was no DNA testing to set it straight.
This of course bears on the whole question of polygamy and polyandry. (Polyandry is the opposite of polygamy, women having multiple husbands.) There have been both polygamous and polyandrous societies in our world, but by far the greater number have been polygamous. Polyandry is usually carried out in a tradition where a woman who marries a man marries all his brothers too. In such an arrangement, the net genes of the family line are still passed forward. Such societies have usually existed under the most arduous of circumstances in which a family supported by a single man does not have a good chance of success.
My World Almanac gives the following population statistics for the world's two main religions.
Christians 1,999,560,000
Muslims 1,188,242,000
Muslims are polygamous. So even today, monogamy does not far outstrip polygamy, if indeed at all when the other religions are taken into account.
So what? Well, at least maybe we can see that the infamous "Double Standard" has some basis in biology and is not just the egotistical creation of selfish men. Given the choice, I would much rather have the inherent certainty of who my children are that women have, than have any privilege that men might have.
And, in the society of The Tribe, the polygamous society in the book, women can have any mate they want, they can change mates any time they please, they just can't have two at the same time.
Tommy Atkinson