• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

"It's my body"[W:191, 709]

Yes, my two sons have separate bodies as well! I'm glad this has been cleared up for you.

It has always been clear to me.

I don't believe it is clear to you, as you still believe otherwise, that at one point in a Homo sapiens lifespan that we are mere property or less than even that, not even our own organism. You believe this doggedly and stupidly despite reason and despite scientific fact.
 
It has always been clear to me.

I don't believe it is clear to you, as you still believe otherwise, that at one point in a Homo sapiens lifespan that we are mere property or less than even that, not even our own organism. You believe this doggedly and stupidly despite reason and despite scientific fact.

You obviously don't know what I believe or what my objections are to mandatory childbirth, because...if you were actually paying attention, you should have noticed that I rarely advance an argument in favour of a woman's choice based on whether or not embryo/fetuses are conscious...have conscious properties...such as developing memories or feeling pain, or even whether or not we should consider them to be "persons."

I am highly skeptical of your personhood beliefs that you have glommed onto for rhetorical purposes, but my main argument for pregnant women having the right to abort, is that...until it is out of her body, any "person" within her is totally dependent on her! Under most circumstances, that should be enough reasons to tell all the concern trolls to butt out, but now I'm not going to bother to tell you what exceptions to choice I would consider.
 
Re: "It's my body"

And the men are from mars, women are from venus BS would provide a nice neat explanation IF male/female relationships always matched the pattern we have now, or similar patterns of the last 5000 years. But, they don't! What's missing from the picture, and the reason why relationships between men and women don't have to be competitive...as they so often are from our reference point - is that the family relationships for hundreds of thousands of years were communal and interconnected. Men had no sense of paternity for thousands of years...there is no indication of paternity awareness prior to about 6000 years ago. For men and women of a tribal group, raising children was a cooperative effort, not a competition as it later became! So all this claptrap of men spreading their seed far and wide, is based on the assumption that they were aware that they were uniquely fathers of individual children. Instead, the prevalent thinking is that each man a woman has sex with prior to pregnancy is a partial father. And conversely, women had no need to compete with other women and beguile or deceive men into choosing them above other women; because their livelihood and that of their children did not depend on any one man alone! This is a fact of modern...or at least post-agricultural life; not the life that existed for most of human evolution. So, the fraud, lying and deception that goes on in much of modern "monogamous" relationships is adaptive, not genetic human behavior.

First, there is no men are from mars, women are from venus thinking in what I said.

In most species, males have maximal genetic input in reproduction by fertilizing as many eggs or oocytes as possible. In fish, females have this by putting as many unfertilized eggs as possible out in the environment. But when reproduction involves sexual intercourse, males have a maximal genetic input by having sex with as many partners as possible, while this is not true for all females. If females go through pregnancy, they can only have as many offspring as allowed by body size and various other factors, so care of offspring after birth to insure their survival becomes especially important for maximizing the genetic input of females in species where pregnancy is relatively long and the number of embryos per pregnancy is low. The fact that this means male and female humans may have genetic tendencies toward different behavior is not sexist. It's just realistic.

Rape has the potential be a useful genetic tendency for maximal genetic output in males but not females. The male Drosophila fruit fly engages in sexual behavior verging on polygynous rape and its sperm are toxic to embryos formed with the sperm of other males, but they are also a low-grade toxin for the females, shortening the latter's lives. But under scientific experimental conditions in which monogamy was the only option available, over many generations, the strength of the toxic quality of the sperm declined and the male sexual behavior lost its violent rape quality and the females lived longer. The evolutionary explanation tentatively given had to do with the fact that the toxic competition of different males' sperm and the violence against females was not genetically adaptive under the changed conditions.

A situation of communality such that offspring will all be communally cared for would not change the fact that male rape could be evolutionarily favorable to males and not to females and that monogamy would prevent the spread of STDs. It's worth knowing that the risk of STDs and some forms of cancer for women increases based on the number of her sex partner's previous sex partners. I do not know of research related to health risks to males based on the number of his sex partner's previous sex partners. However, it is just common sense that, the more partners the other has had, the more likely he or she is to have an STD. The increased risk of some forms of cancer has not yet been explained, but since childbirth associates with a higher risk of cervical cancer, it is possible that this is related to the fact of higher likelihood of exposure to an HPV virus.

I have heard women who prefer monogamy say, if the guy can sleep with just anybody, then you don't know where his penis has been - ick. I understand that men, having external sexual organs, may not have the same response. But when you put something six or more inches inside of your body, you want to have some control over whether or not it's contaminated by something you don't want to put in there. That is not sexism. It's just common sense. And I suspect that the same free-for-all would be especially bad for females because males would have no reason for not committing acts of violence when they could not have their way. And for me, that's just common sense, too.

I for one do not think that the communal model with people just having sex with multiple partners in an unregulated free-for-all is the healthiest approach, even though I do think that communal care of offspring can be a stellar idea.

Furthermore, sleeping around is a very undergraduate approach to sexuality. Longer term specialization in sexual relationships are less superficial. And this benefits women, in as much as it involves men finding out how to sexually satisfy them, which is objectively a trickier matter than sexually satisfying men, and can lead toward treating sexual activity as a partner art form, which is thus humanized sex. Which is not to say that monogamy has to last a lifetime - that depends on how the partners feel about it.

We have almost no evidence of how people lived more than 5,000 years ago. If you claim that men had no sense of paternity before 6,000 years ago, you need to provide a link to a site that can prove that, and I for one know of no evidence of men's thought or anybody's thought about that in archeological remains and relics. Sexual relationships and living arrangements and subsistence strategies are completely different things, and evidence of the latter two tell us nothing about sexual relationships. And I know of no societies in which people have sex with just anybody. There are several basic forms of marriage, but there is marriage in every known human society. Some are genuinely polygynous, which can be related to a populational dirth of men and thus can be common in warrior societies. When this model is completely agreed on by both men and women, women aren't exploited by it, but will tell the anthropologist things like, "You should make your husband get another wife for you, otherwise, who will share the work, who will care for you when you're sick?" Some are genuinely polyandrous, usually with brothers sharing a wife, which seems to be related to a dirth of women. But no known society, tribal or otherwise, is without some attempt to regulate sexual behavior. Monogamy is not unknown in matrilocal, matrilineal societies.
 
Re: "It's my body"

Today, those of us who prefer stability in our lives, and are less impulsive than some who enjoy taking risks, would still prefer monogamous relationships that are based on equality and honesty, rather than competitive deceit of rival game theorists. The high level of cooperation of hunter/gatherer societies led to what the researchers term - cooperative breeding behavior:

This is interesting, and I'm going to read what you linked to.

Well, I'm not going to answer for the rest of the primate world, but humans cannot be described as innately hierarchical, because hunter/gatherer societies that were "immediate return," that is had to spend some time each day searching for and catching food, had such high needs for cooperative behaviour that they often established rules against consuming food out in the field, before it was brought back to the group for a common shared meal. Among the men of a tribe....naturally some are bigger and stronger than others, and some are better hunters. But, what surprises anthropologists in their written notes is that typically - one man who makes a big catch, is not allowed to bring it back and claim credit for it. Instead, the other hunters hack off pieces of meat and bring them back collectively so that the women, children and other men of the group who were not on the hunt, have no ability to discern who the great hunter is. And if one man is too boastful and wants attention for himself, the others will engage in "status-leveling behaviour", such as mocking or making jokes about him...until he shuts up presumably!

If we began as hierarchical primates with homo erectus, we didn't stay that way out on the grasslands and forests of Africa. There was a strong need to emphasize the communal, rather than the individual, and the fact that we have spent at most - 10,000 years now, moving in the opposite direction, is not enough time to make these changes biological, rather than adaptive behavior.

For myself, I think the greatest evidence against the necessity and importance of human hierarchies, is there destructive power in today's world as noted by many sociologists and epidemiologists. It may be impossible or at least impractical to eliminate hiearchy today; but time and time again, we discover that the greater the levels of inequality exist, the greater the social and physical harms, and vice versa in less hierarchical, unequal societies.

Hierarchy is partly a function of the size of a society. Paired social units, offering possibilities of intimate synthesis and absolute antithesis, do not admit all basic social relations. A third unit allows emergence of such relations as jealousy, alliance, mediation, etc. A small band society has little need of hierarchy for unity because everyone knows every other intimately, i.e., they have long, face-to-face relations. Though all the possibilities of "society" can occur, the relations are always colored by face-to-face connection.

The larger the society, the more it moves away from this communication model and the possibility of all members having face-to-face paired relations as well as others. Hierarchy can unite people who never meet or even communicate at a distance. You can't be communal with people you never see, hear, or communicate with.

Similarly, occupational specialization makes societies complex. Pregnancy is not a male possibility. Some types of strenuous activities are less easy in later pregnancy and may risk miscarriage; depending on subsistence activity, childbirth may bring a need for postpartum rest; breastfeeding is how most neonates survive; doing this even with two-year-olds can lower pregnancy risk (a kind of birth control). These differences are a key to communal big-game hunting as virtually exclusively male, i.e., the first occupational specialization. Proliferation of occupational specialization brings hierarchies of specialization, etc., which characterize "civilizations."

In a society where everyone knows everyone personally, the individual is in intimate paired relations with everybody, but societal hierarchy can bring individual alienation and special concern with the individual, which usually also entails concern with intimate paired relations.

And of course, settled agriculture, as opposed to slash and burn agriculture, brings the problems of reduced mobility, individual/familial accumulation of goods, etc., and all they contribute to hierarchy.

So hierarchy doesn't have to be based on biology at all: it can emerge just from Simmel's sociological insights on one, two, three, and more social units and the issues of size or scale, reduced one-on-one relations, occupational specialization, settlement, reduced mobility, accumulation, etc. On the other hand, both hierarchy and concern for the individual can emerge simply when survival is sufficiently challenged that individuals are alienated by the sheer challenge of radically difficult survival conditions.

Try anthropologist Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, which shows the difference of the communal Mbuti from the less attractive society of surrounding tribal villages, and then his The Mountain People, where the once communal Ik, their traditional hunting grounds taken away, faced starvation conditions and lost their communality to the extent that small children were basically kicked out of families to fend for themselves and people stole food from the less able elderly.

But we'd better get back to the OP now . . . .
 
Well, this one really went off course, but I'll venture into it at least once, since I have spent most of my time on forums dealing with politics...often U.S. politics, since my mother's family is from Michigan and I still have U.S. citizenship...even though I hardly cross the border these days.

Back when Barry first arrived on the scene, there was a lot of hope behind him, even though there were already questions swirling about how he got such an inside push in a year when everyone expected the Democratic Party to coronate Hillary Clinton as the contender. As soon as he won and was in office, hope and change and the antiwar movements etc., all got rolled up and told to go home, and Barack and his team went to work being "bipartisan" and reaching across the aisle. The money and the rhetorical support for the left disappeared, and when some of them complained about their treatment . . . . The reason being, the same reason why Bill Clinton did the same damn thing in his first term in office: both of these clowns were not the progressive reformers they pretended to be. . . .

I agree that this is what happened with Obama, but not so much with Bill Clinton. The latter could not have gotten elected had he not posited a "third way," and as it was, the only reason he got the plurality he did was that pro-choice Republican Ross Perot siphoned about 16% of the vote, mostly from the GOP candidate. By two years after the election, a young right-wing opposition took over the House and Hillary had to bake cookies to placate them. But Obama really was committed to the bi-partisanism crap he ran on, and despite the fact that he had been against the vote to release funds for invading Iraq if it became necessary, from the start, I knew he would not have the guts to get out of Iraq quickly. Hillary would have been less problematic - there were all sorts of indications of this. The right-wing had it all wrong - she had more progressive instincts than the Obamas, more guts in facing down right-wing opponents, more experience in negotiating and even manipulating opponents to progressive advantage, and much more.

No they don't...at least, not anymore! Both of the established political parties are aware of recent economic data showing the middle class is continuing to collapse and merge with the underclass, as the top echalon of earners increases their net worth. Recent retail numbers tell us that right now, less than 18% of the highest income earners are responsible for more than 60% of retail sales today. They don't need us...except as slave labor or peons in security forces and foreign wars. It's back to the old ways, and it should have been expected...as this notion of the need for a middle class came and went with the 20th century!

You misunderstand. Both sides do know the need of a strong middle class for democracy- and by this I don't mean middle class in the late 19th/early 20th century sense, a Marxian sense, but in the post-WWII sense, the "new middle class," meaning a prosperous salaried working class. The wealthiest class does not work, and the upper middle, the people you refer to, is not a large prosperous working class. When we had that "new middle class," we had a viable economy because that class could invest in housing, small business, and, via retirement accounts, etc., the market, and it had more money to spend, as did poor workers, because the minimum wage was equivalent to a wage that would be almost $.3 per hour more than it is now, and health care/insurance, etc., were cheaper. The point is that the right wing doesn't want democracy.


There are more taxes than income taxes. The poor do not get compensated for spending meagre earnings on sales tax contributions.
Much of the logic behind reducing taxes on the rich was that they would agree to the removal of tax loopholes; what's happened instead is that they have added to the number of loopholes and tax dodges available...especially being allowed to offshore their money and corporate headquarters even to foreign tax havens, while the floor is the limit of what they are willing to pay in taxes. For a real reform, I would propose removing all of the powers that artificial corporate citizens have accumulated over the last 150 years, and putting them back at where they were when the American nation was founded. That is what conservatives and traditionalists say they want...I'd like to know if their fondness for the FF's and their Constitution goes beyond rhetorical.

Agreement on increased sales tax - but that is part of the way states compensate for their own loopholes in income tax on the wealthy. As for going back to treating business as at the founding, no. That was only agreed to because non-property owners couldn't vote at all. The loopholes and corporate subsidies are the big culprit. I like the government giving small business a break, but not big business. And the farm bills and corporate subsidies are the worst - big agribusinesses and big corporations in, e.g., the oil and gas industries have been getting welfare for ages, and conservatives vote for them - even Tea Party people vote for them.

Nothing will be done about income inequality any more than climate change or the growth of the military-industrial complex, as long as the economic status quo remains. I've said many times on other threads that economic theory based on a constantly growing economy...needed to absorb constantly rising levels of debt and increases in money supply, are not compatible with the facts of the real world we live in - a finite world, with hard limits on land and natural capital available. We need new economics that is compatible with a world that doesn't have room for our demands for growth, and there are a few different, alternative models, but the notion of trickle down economics...where wealth finds it's way down to the lower income levels has not been happening for several decades now...instead, the exact opposite is happening - wealth is being extracted from lower income levels and poorer nations of the world, to feed the constant demand for more by the world's plutocrats. And that's why this is the most dangerous time in human history! We have a nearly all-powerful small group of psychopathic plutocrats, willing to take any risk to increase their wealth and standing among the world's oligarchs. And they don't have any concerns for others or the wreckage they make of this world. Their conduct in the face of natural man-made disasters like oil spills, pipeline leaks, nuclear meltdowns etc., show them to be a class of people who will risk everyone's survival for their own short term wants and desires.

Agreement, agreement . . . .
 
Last edited:
You obviously don't know what I believe or what my objections are to mandatory childbirth

Really? Besides your numerous rants that have absolutely nothing to do with the debate?

Or is it your blatant admission to objection to childbirth in your following paragraph?

Please do clear this up.
 
Really? Besides your numerous rants that have absolutely nothing to do with the debate? Or is it your blatant admission to objection to childbirth in your following paragraph? Please do clear this up.

I believe Commie said he objects to the revolting idea of MANDATORY childbirth, where women would be FORCED to continue pregnancies to childbirth, even if it is against their will. I object to that as well.

Since it is the WOMAN who assumes all the health risks -- and potentially life-threatening complications -- of both pregnancy AND childbirth, it makes sense that ONLY the woman makes the decision whether to continue the pregnancy or not. If it isn't YOUR pregnancy, meaning if YOU aren't the woman who is pregnant, it isn't your decision. Simple as that.
 
Really? Besides your numerous rants that have absolutely nothing to do with the debate?

Or is it your blatant admission to objection to childbirth in your following paragraph?

Please do clear this up.
Shut up! I wasn't even talking to you, and I don't usually even bother responding to your stupid posts, because all your tiny brain can come up with is the 'innocent babies' bs over and over again.
 
I believe Commie said he objects to the revolting idea of MANDATORY childbirth, where women would be FORCED to continue pregnancies to childbirth, even if it is against their will. I object to that as well.

Since it is the WOMAN who assumes all the health risks -- and potentially life-threatening complications -- of both pregnancy AND childbirth, it makes sense that ONLY the woman makes the decision whether to continue the pregnancy or not. If it isn't YOUR pregnancy, meaning if YOU aren't the woman who is pregnant, it isn't your decision. Simple as that.

Exactly! The only thing that surprises me these days about self-proclaimed prolifers, is that they don't even bother to deal with life after birth issues....someone else's problem....or similar selfish, right wing responses. So why are they so concerned about "unborn" life? Simple answer: it's all about their perceived loss of control over women and getting it back again.
 
First, there is no men are from mars, women are from venus thinking in what I said.

In most species, males have maximal genetic input in reproduction by fertilizing as many eggs or oocytes as possible. If females go through pregnancy, they can only have as many offspring as allowed by body size and various other factors, so care of offspring after birth to insure their survival becomes especially important for maximizing the genetic input of females in species where pregnancy is relatively long and the number of embryos per pregnancy is low. The fact that this means male and female humans may have genetic tendencies toward different behavior is not sexist. It's just realistic.
It may be realistic....and wrong, if it is not found in human behaviour prior to advanced cultures!
What I am finding as I have returned to study the subject of anthropology and early human cultures after a long hiatus, is that there is a prevailing orthodoxy of opinion that tries to legitimize modern culture....or at least why modern cultural norms (hierarchies, monogamy/polygamy, capitalist economics etc.) seem to be universal, by what Christopher Ryan called "Flinstonization" of prehistory...or looking for evidence outside of early human culture (since they are rarely found there) and going back more steps to other animals (chimpanzees) and even unrelated animal species for evidence of hierarchical behaviour and other modern universal norms. I didn't get a chance to point out earlier, that Jane Goodall's vicious chimpanzee colony she studied in East Africa may have been anomalous, as other researchers, doing detailed notes on other chimpanzees in other areas are finding them to be much less violent, and even less carnivorous than the chimps at Gombe. This should stand to reason, as chimpanzees are highly developed mammals who's behaviour may be greatly influenced by environmental conditions...much like human behaviour. A space alien who landed on earth in Europe in 1941, is going to have a different view of human behaviour than landing at a time of relative peace and great optimism of the future - like at the turn of the 20th century.

It has been noted by some of the more recent fans of Lewis Henry Morgan and even Frederich Engels...who himself did not research human origins, but gathered Morgan's, Bachofen's and the writings of missionaries and explorers to build his own theory of prehistory...that it is for the prime reason that Engels, and through him - Marx got involved in this issue, that the western academics tried to minimize the work of Bachofen and Morgan and come up with an alternative theory of early human society supporting capitalism and patriarchy, that works primarily by smuggling in assumptions through other species and other unrelated fields of research. A good explanation of how Morgan was buried in ignomity, while dodgy work by rivals like Westermarck became accepted wisdom, the best brief summary I found is from From Early Human Kinship Was Matrilinial by Chris Knight (2008):

The reaction
Around the turn of the century, virtually all those who had helped found the
discipline of anthropology converged around the fundamentals of the Bachofen-
Morgan theory. As Murdock (1949: 185) subsequently observed, the ‘extremely
plausible’ arguments in its favour included (a) the biological inevitability of the
mother-child bond (b) the intrinsic difficulty in establishing biological paternity
and (c) numerous apparent survivals of matrilineal traditions in societies with
patrilineal descent groups. ‘So logical, so closely reasoned, and so apparently in
accord with all known facts was this hypothesis’, continues Murdock, ‘that from
its pioneer formulation by Bachofen in 1861 to nearly the end of the nineteenth
century it was accepted by social scientists practically without exception’.
So, what changed everyone’s mind? As we review the historical evidence, it
becomes clear that political passions were never far beneath the surface and
ultimately played the decisive role. With regard to the topic of ‘primitive
promiscuity’, Engels (1972b [1884]: 47) commented:
It has become the fashion of late to deny the existence of this initial stage in the sexual
life of mankind. The aim is to spare humanity this ‘shame’.

Once Engels had incorporated Morgan’s findings into the socialist canon,
however, no one could write neutrally on such topics any more. Morgan’s Ancient
Society, as Robert Lowie (1937: 54-5) was later to comment,
attracted the notice of Marx and Engels, who accepted and popularised its evolutionary
doctrines as being in harmony with their own philosophy. As a result it was promptly
translated into various European tongues, and German workingmen would sometimes
reveal an uncanny familiarity with the Hawaiian and Iroquois mode of designating kin,
matters not obviously connected with a proletarian revolution.
Once Engels had endorsed it, Morgan’s theory was destined to become a casualty
of the central conflict of the age. Social anthropologists may like to imagine that
their discipline became shaped in its modern form quite independently of
Marxism. It would be more accurate to describe it as moulded specifically in
reaction against the ideas of Engels and Marx.
‘With Morgan’s scheme
incorporated into Communist doctrine’, observes Marvin Harris (1969: 249), ‘the
struggling science of anthropology crossed the threshold of the twentieth century
with a clear mandate for its own survival and well-being: expose Morgan’s
scheme and destroy the method on which it was based’.

When it comes to human hierarchies...obviously we have them now, and they are impossible to negate in human societies, other than closed, highly ordered religious communities who shut out all outside influence and have little contact with the outside world. But, is this because we are biologically programmed to be hierarchical or because we are socialized along hierarchies of relative wealth and status in modern societies? The question is: why don't immediate-return hunter/gatherer societies show evidence of hierarchies now or in the past? Why do so many anthropologists continually describe both the males and females of these basic, primitive societies engaging in "status-leveling" behaviours to try to prevent some exceptional individuals from excelling or rising to high level of importance in the community? The answer is simple, if we accept that these societies which constantly move and search for food every day, have such high need for cooperation, that competition cannot be allowed by members of the group! This may not impact on the way we live today, except that, if we want to understand what is good and what is bad about today's culture, we have to understand our roots and accept that as the starting point.
 
Last edited:
situation of communality such that offspring will all be communally cared for would not change the fact that male rape could be evolutionarily favorable to males and not to females and that monogamy would prevent the spread of STDs. It's worth knowing that the risk of STDs and some forms of cancer for women increases based on the number of her sex partner's previous sex partners. I do not know of research related to health risks to males based on the number of his sex partner's previous sex partners. However, it is just common sense that, the more partners the other has had, the more likely he or she is to have an STD. The increased risk of some forms of cancer has not yet been explained, but since childbirth associates with a higher risk of cervical cancer, it is possible that this is related to the fact of higher likelihood of exposure to an HPV virus.

The sterile, self-interested moral theories advanced by evolutionary psychology have no adequate explanation for why rape isn't the universal norm for human males! If we accept their claptrap about 'spreading our seed' far and wide, it would make sense if all men were rapists, and went about stealing and killing for food and raping any and all females they found. The fact that rape is a long-established taboo, and is unacceptable to most men, should tell us that our morals were not founded in the modern values of the cult of the individual. As for STD's, it needs to be emphasized and underlined again, that what was described as promiscuity by western observers, was not considered promiscuous by native hunter/gatherers and horticulturalists, because they were not engaging in indiscriminate sex with strangers....like modern swingers. Instead, they were familiar with any and all sexual partners they might have in these communities, and the sexual relationships were used to strengthen family bonds - not as alternative to them! For example, among the Senecas that Morgan lived with that he described, a new husband would be expected to have sexual relationships with his new wife and her sisters as well. In the matriarchal household of the longhouse, this would minimize tensions and rivalries. The new husband had to introduce his brothers to his new family, and they were free to have sex with his wife and/or her sisters...providing they were in agreement on the relationships. Just as the bonobos, the sexual relationships were intended to unite both families. And when it came to the children...even if they had developed concepts of paternity prior to the arrival of Europeans, no one would know exactly who fathered which child...which would be of no consequence anyway, in a society where family inheritance and lineage was through the mother, not the father, as in European society.

It is believed that the STD - Gonorrhea, originated in the New World....unlike every other sexually-transmitted disease, but it is unknown where it arose, and how widely it spread until the arrival of Europeans...who despite their sexually repressed religion and culture, were highly promiscuous, and became the greatest disease vectors in the history of the human race! Not comforting info for us who are of European descent, but for once, we should be honest about our history and culture!


I have heard women who prefer monogamy say, if the guy can sleep with just anybody, then you don't know where his penis has been - ick. I understand that men, having external sexual organs, may not have the same response. But when you put something six or more inches inside of your body, you want to have some control over whether or not it's contaminated by something you don't want to put in there. That is not sexism. It's just common sense. And I suspect that the same free-for-all would be especially bad for females because males would have no reason for not committing acts of violence when they could not have their way. And for me, that's just common sense, too.
Yes, I am well aware of that; and that's why I venture into the subject of human origins to understand where we came from, but not necessarily how we should live now! I have been in a monogamous marriage for over 25 years...and I'm pretty sure we were monogamous from the time we decided to move in together three years prior to formal marriage. The casual attitude that Morgan and others described of native women they encountered, may have been due mostly to the fact that they had little fear of sexually transmitted diseases, and even more important - they were not dependent on any one man for their livelihood. It's easy to understand how women became fiercely monogamous in patriarchal societies...and even our somewhat more egalitarian society today, women still have more at risk if a marriage fails....and that is why so many of my friends continually bitch about what they have to pay for alimony and child support. But, when the marriage dissolves, their obligations are mostly financial....they are not stuck investing the time in the years needed to raise the children to adulthood.
 
I for one do not think that the communal model with people just having sex with multiple partners in an unregulated free-for-all is the healthiest approach, even though I do think that communal care of offspring can be a stellar idea.
Furthermore, sleeping around is a very undergraduate approach to sexuality. Longer term specialization in sexual relationships are less superficial. And this benefits women, in as much as it involves men finding out how to sexually satisfy them, which is objectively a trickier matter than sexually satisfying men, and can lead toward treating sexual activity as a partner art form, which is thus humanized sex. Which is not to say that monogamy has to last a lifetime - that depends on how the partners feel about it.
As mentioned earlier, communal life of our ancestors is not the same thing as communal life of hippies that moved out into the countryside to commune with nature.
We have almost no evidence of how people lived more than 5,000 years ago. If you claim that men had no sense of paternity before 6,000 years ago, you need to provide a link to a site that can prove that, and I for one know of no evidence of men's thought or anybody's thought about that in archeological remains and relics.
Do you realize your question is a double negative? Since there are primitive societies described as having concepts of shared fatherhood of children, I would argue the burden of proof is on the side of paternity-certainty...and it is less likely to have been a concept formulated in societies that were not patriarchal...as it is hard to explain patriarchy without a sense of owning or possessing children. Since western culture begins with patriarchy, it's a safe assumption that some sort of concept of paternity existed prior to the development of our cultures. But, they are not universal, and it's a dubious assumption that the theories of parental investment advanced as a standard model by evolutionary psychologists like Pinker, explain human development.

The Concept of Partible Paternity among Native South Americans
Stephen Beckerman and Paul Valentine

The Doctrine
Inhabitants of the modern Western world are well aware that each child has one biological
father and one only. We know that, in sexually reproducing organisms, only one sperm
fertilizes the egg, and we know this rule holds for people as well as penguins. The doctrine
of single paternity, as a folk belief, goes so far back in Western history and is so extended
through our social and legal institutions that it is difficult for us to imagine that anyone could
entertain any other view of biological paternity. Nowhere in all the begats of the Bible do we
find any hint that a child might have more than one father. Aristotle (1992, 53-54) offers no
suggestion that a human child might have multiple fathers – although he does hold out that
possibility for birds. The Law of the Twelve Tables, the oldest surviving codification of
Roman law (451 B.C.), clearly assumes that a child is the product of a single biological
father:..............................................
The idea is roughly that men provision women and their
children with foods that the women cannot obtain on their own, because they are
burdened with dependent children. Men are willing to share their food because the women,
faithful to their mates, provide the men with a high degree of paternity certainty. When a
man brings his game home to his woman, he can reliably assume that the children it feeds
are his own (Alexander and Noonan 1979; cf. Washburn and Lancaster 1968.) This
scenario, now two decades old, is sometimes called the Standard Model of Human
Evolution. It remains the dominant version of the story of the evolution of food sharing and
the human family........................................................

These views of universal human nature, as well as the male-female bargain behind the
Standard Model of Human Evolution, are called into question by decades of ethnographic
research among tribal peoples in lowland South America. Some of the older work is cited in
this introductory essay. Recent findings, particularly those directed to the issues raised here,
are reported in this volume. This work, old and new, has made two relevant findings about a
substantial number of lowland South American societies. First, the people of these societies
have a different doctrine of paternity, one that allows for a child to have several different
biological fathers. Second, these people act on that doctrine in such as way as to confute
such statements as Pinker’s that “in no society do men readily share a wife.”
In addition to the societies discussed in this volume, there are quite a few other societies in
lowland South America where the idea that paternity is partible, that more than one man
can contribute to the formation and development of a fetus, has been reported. These
societies are dispersed over much of the continent, and represent many different languages
and language families.
The distributional evidence argues that it is
possible to build a biologically and socially competent society – a society whose members
do a perfectly adequate job of reproducing themselves and their social relations – with a
culture that incorporates a belief in partible paternity......................... A decade
and a half ago, Counts and Counts published a report on the ideology of the Lusi of West
New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea:1 “The notion that the foetus grows as a result of
multiple acts of intercourse seems to prevail, for the Lusi – even the young people who
assert that only one act is required – generally agree that it is possible for a person to have
more than one father” (1983, 49). All these findings seem all the more expectable in the
light of recent calculations by Wyckoff, Wang, and Wu (2000), which are compatible with
the proposition that a good deal of human evolution may have been marked by a reproductive pattern in which semen from multiple
mates may have been present at the same time in the female reproductive tract. Indeed, even
in the present day there is reason to inquire whether belief in partible paternity may not
provide some advantages that are lacking in cultures whose theories of conception are
limited to plain-vanilla single paternity. There are a couple of ethnographic cases in South
America where we can explore this claim, although we cannot test it directly among all the
peoples who profess a belief in partible paternity.........................................
Frequently, pregnancy is viewed as a matter of degree, not clearly distinguished from
gestation. For the Kulina, for instance, all sexually active women are a little pregnant. Over
time, as Pollock reports, semen accumulates in the womb, a fetus is formed, further acts of
intercourse follow, and additional semen causes the fetus to grow more. Only when semen
accretion reaches a certain level is pregnancy irreversible.
Lea reports somewhat similar ideas among the Mebengokre, where there is “neither a
notion of fertilization nor of subsequent ‘natural’ growth; rather the fetus is built up
gradually, somewhat like a snowball.”............................................
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...4N_RMfTDmdQPUbLmjx5QesA&bvm=bv.61725948,d.aWc
 
You obviously don't know what I believe or what my objections are to mandatory childbirth

"mandatory childbirth" :roll:

I know what you believe. You believe that during our lifespan we are mere property to be killed on one of our parent's whims. Which is ironic of course, given your stance on property.

I am highly skeptical of your personhood beliefs that you have glommed onto for rhetorical purposes

No, I don't believe in equality and human rights for rhetorical purposes. I oppose people like you because you have no regard for them and I do.
 
Exactly! The only thing that surprises me these days about self-proclaimed prolifers, is that they don't even bother to deal with life after birth issues....someone else's problem....or similar selfish, right wing responses. So why are they so concerned about "unborn" life? Simple answer: it's all about their perceived loss of control over women and getting it back again.

Absurd and stupid.

The issues of social(ist) welfare programs and abortion are distinct.

One could theoretically oppose abortion and promote socialism, promote abortion and oppose socialism, promote both, or oppose both.

Just because I consistently oppose violations the right to property and violations of the right to life (as I favor equality and human rights), while you promote such violations (due to your lack of respect for human rights) does not mean that the issues are linked.
 
All the more reason to remove it from the woman's body.

No, there's never "all the more reason" to kill another human being in aggression, especially when their predicament is entirely your own fault.
 
Shut up! I wasn't even talking to you, and I don't usually even bother responding to your stupid posts, because all your tiny brain can come up with

As predicted, you fail to produce a compelling argument about the topic and instead opt for bland retorts and whiny rhetoric.

is the 'innocent babies' bs over and over again.

This is is nonsensical and ridiculous. How are these vulnerable life forms not innocent?
 
"mandatory childbirth" :roll:

I know what you believe. You believe that during our lifespan we are mere property to be killed on one of our parent's whims. Which is ironic of course, given your stance on property.



No, I don't believe in equality and human rights for rhetorical purposes. I oppose people like you because you have no regard for them and I do.

Next!
 
No, there's never "all the more reason" to kill another human being in aggression, especially when their predicament is entirely your own fault.

just tell them that testing has shown that the fetus might be gay, then they'll be all about protecting it....
 
Absurd and stupid.

The issues of social(ist) welfare programs and abortion are distinct.

One could theoretically oppose abortion and promote socialism, promote abortion and oppose socialism, promote both, or oppose both.

Just because I consistently oppose violations the right to property and violations of the right to life (as I favor equality and human rights), while you promote such violations (due to your lack of respect for human rights) does not mean that the issues are linked.

Well, it took 187 pages, but thanks for finally getting to the point!

1.Yes, someone could oppose abortion and promote "socialism"...but now you have to define the meaning and implications for your use of the term - socialism.

2.If you promote both - "socialism" and abortion choice, you're not violating those principles, because you are offering support to those pregnant women who have found themselves in difficult circumstances, while leaving that abortion option open to them during pregnancy.

3.Not so fast Chuck! This is where your shell game comes to an end! If you disallow an abortion option to the pregnant woman, and offer no guaranteed support for her during and after pregnancy, then your moral universe is revealed as a fraud...which is what cynics like me have suspected all along; the concern is not regarding life but the control of women through eliminating reproductive choices from women. You can create a straw man called "socialism," all you want. But, you and the whole army behind you, who want to take away a woman's right to choose an abortion, are just trying to dodge the moral consequences. Where family, their church communities, and other volunteer efforts, leave gaps in adequately providing for the care and development of resulting children...in cases where the mother wants to keep her baby...then THE STATE has to play the role of provider of last resort. And prolifers...regardless of political ideology or affiliation have the moral obligation for ensuring that the state can serve the role of provider of last resort!

If you try to shirk those responsibilities by denial or through deliberate ignorance, then all of your high-minded moral claims of concern for life, are revealed as faux concerns! So, back to #1, this is the only prolife/anti-abortion position that is consistent. Not that I agree with it anyway, because it still removes the personal right of pregnant women, but at least it would be consistent.
 
As predicted, you fail to produce a compelling argument about the topic and instead opt for bland retorts and whiny rhetoric.



This is is nonsensical and ridiculous. How are these vulnerable life forms not innocent?
You did not make any point in the comment you placed over mine, so there was nothing to discuss, let alone debate!
 
just tell them that testing has shown that the fetus might be gay, then they'll be all about protecting it....

And, obviously the reverse would work on you conservatives, because the last thing you people would want to protect was a fetus that could be predetermined to grow up as a gay adult.
 
3.Not so fast Chuck! This is where your shell game comes to an end! If you disallow an abortion option to the pregnant woman, and offer no guaranteed support for her during and after pregnancy, then your moral universe is revealed as a fraud...which is what cynics like me have suspected all along; the concern is not regarding life but the control of women through eliminating reproductive choices from women.
Indeed, it is this totally fake facade, whether out of ignorance or sheer dishonesty that is so contemptible.

If you try to shirk those responsibilities by denial or through deliberate ignorance, then all of your high-minded moral claims of concern for life, are revealed as faux concerns! So, back to #1, this is the only prolife/anti-abortion position that is consistent. Not that I agree with it anyway, because it still removes the personal right of pregnant women, but at least it would be consistent.
Quite so.
 
And, obviously the reverse would work on you conservatives, because the last thing you people would want to protect was a fetus that could be predetermined to grow up as a gay adult.

who said anything about liberals or conservatives? partisan hack much?
 
Back
Top Bottom