# What's the evolutionary purpose of nervousness around the opposite sex? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 14, 2011, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616 "2011-03-14T03:17:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/61 "2011-03-18T12:54:44Z")
Why do you think the penalties for women who commit adultery are historically so high? You don’t need draconian measures to prevent something that nobody wants to do. Why keep your wife under lock and key if all she she really wants to do is focus on her kids? Why the threat of stonings and scarlet letters if a women have no real motivation to have sex with other men? The historical record- from the bible to royal records- is full of illegitimate kids, affairs, and sexual intrigue that sometimes involve married women. All of this despite the fact that few men are going to admit to being cuckholded (why do we even have that word if it’s a rare event?) I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Pre-industrialized African villages? I had quite a few girl friends that were getting some on the side. One had a lover in her home village she’d see whenever she went back to visit her parents. Another’s husband was away on business, and she brought quite a few men into her home and caused a bit of scandal because it got to the point where the neighbors couldn’t ignore it. This is in a very proper Muslim village, by the way, where most women gave birth to around ten children. Divorce wasn’t as automatic as you would think it is- men didn’t really want to make that stuff public, and often they were getting just as much on the side or had other wives, so they were just happy their wife was leaving them alone. Anyway, after market day, you don’t want to head out into the bushes or you will stumble upon lovers. And since people got married between 12-15, any female partner you find is likely already married. The kids in my village had an uncanny way of looking exactly like their siblings- you could see any kid and point out what family they were from. One day I asked about it, and the person I asked laughed and said “Well, sometimes one doesn’t. Then the husband is usually mad.” Let’s go around the world to modern China, which can be very prudish. Adultery is pretty common among men. What surprised me was to learn that women also do it- young housewives will say they are going to “play mah-jongg” as an excuse to meet their lovers while their husbands are working long hours. You can even get male prostitutes for women- they are handsome young men who specialize in well-off older ladies. In the good old US of A, they found 22% of men cheated on their marriage, versus 15% of women. Not that huge of a difference, is it? Women have orgasms. They have clits. They have sex drives. Historically, they are often married to men older than them who lose their ability to perform sexually or turn their interests elsewhere. Do you really think most women are perfectly happy with that? It’s a cheating world out there. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/62 "2011-03-18T14:04:32Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Why do you think the penalties for women who commit adultery are historically so high? You don’t need draconian measures to prevent something that nobody wants to do. The penalties for having sex with dogs was even higher than the penalties for adultery. Conversely the penalties for masturbation were much lower. Are you seriously arguing that more people wanted to have sex with dogs than wanted to commit adultery? And that more people wanted to commit adultery than wanted to masturbate? Or do you, perhaps, now understand that the severity of a penalty has no relationship whatsoever to the frequency of the crime? > [@](#): > > Why keep your wife under lock and key if all she she really wants to do is focus on her kids? Why the threat of stonings and scarlet letters if a women have no real motivation to have sex with other men? Once again, the same, and even harsher, penalties applied to men having sex with goats. So what is your point? That a desire to have sex with goats was common in these societies, and only prevented because of the penalties involved? :dubious: > [@](#): > > The historical record- from the bible to royal records- is full of illegitimate kids, affairs, and sexual intrigue that sometimes involve married women. No, that simply isn’t true. For those parts of the Bible that can be considered in any way historical, there are maybe two references to infidelity of married women. For a written record of over a thousand years, that is hardly “full of” And I can’t think of any instances of married women having children in royal records. Allegations and slurs sure. But actual records.. no. Can you provide ten examples for us? Once again, given that this a is a record of several millenia over two continents, if the records were “full of” such accounts then it should be trivial to find us ten examples. > [@](#): > > All of this despite the fact that few men are going to admit to being cuckholded (why do we even have that word if it’s a rare event?) Are you seriously arguing that any event for which we have a word must be common? :dubious: Is so, can you explain why do we have words for bestiality, apocalypse and genocide? > [@](#): > > I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Ahhh, anecdote. That certainly trumps genetic evidence. You are sounding like one of those 19th century anthropologists who, having spent a year or so living with a group of people, is quite convinced that they know all about them, including their entire history and moreover is convinced that the whole world was always like that. This the type of anecdotal nonsense that contributed to Mead’s being conned by the Samoans. Unless you personally have watched these people engaging in coitus then your recounting of village gossip is of little value in ascertaining the facts. I don’t know why you credit such gossip from an African market but would not credit it if you heard it in a Mall in the USA. Now if you can produce a reference from a credible anthropologist to support your contentions, then we can discuss it. > [@](#): > > Another’s husband was away on business, and she brought quite a few men into her home and caused a bit of scandal because it got to the point where the neighbors couldn’t ignore it… Divorce wasn’t as automatic as you would think it is- men didn’t really want to make that stuff public, and often they were getting just as much on the side or had other wives, so they were just happy their wife was leaving them alone. The husbands know that the wives have other sexual partners and do not care and are happy to support the children. And any husband who wants to catch his wife cheating need only walk into the bushes after market day. So we are talking about open relationships, and not infidelity at all. > [@](#): > > In the good old US of A, they found 22% of men cheated on their marriage, versus 15% of women. Not that huge of a difference, is it? The modern USA? the country with a divorce rate of \>50%? A country where nobody can ever possibly starve to death unless they make an effort? The country with access to free birth control of every form imaginable? Do you think it is conceivable that those factors might just have some influence on > [@](#): > > Do you really think most women are perfectly happy with that? Do you really think most men are happy to work 10 hours a day at backbreaking labour, and then be conscripted to go an be mutilated in a war against someone they have never heard of? In the real world, happiness doesn’t enter into it. > [@](#): > > It’s a cheating world out there. No, it isn’t. The genetic evidence says that less than 20% of children have falsely attributed paternity, worldwide. Genetic evidence says that historically the rates were even lower. If \<1% is you defintion of a cheating world then it’s also a cystic fibrosis world out there. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/63 "2011-03-18T15:42:56Z")
The Cameroonian women I refer to were my friends, the same as any of your own buddies. I talk not as a cultural expert, but as someone who lived in a community as a high school teacher. You can disbelieve what I say about my friends if you want, but there is no real reason to. Anyway, it’s not like they are open relationships, it’s just that (like in America) people can be selective in what they allow themselves to see or fully understand. How many people here basically know their SOs are cheating but choose not to face that fact? It’s the same thing. Your “genetic record” shows something about who people reproduce with, but little about who they sleep with. Obviously if you are sleeping with your husband three times a week and carrying on with someone else once a month when your husband leaves for the cattle market, you are much more likely to be having kids with your husband. Affairs are rarely the same in duration or frequency of sexual contact as marriages. Furthermore, women in traditional agricultural societies spent a lot of time pregnant or breastfeeding and thus not fertile. It’s not rocket science to figure out when it isn’t a good idea to stray from your husband. If female sexual pleasure is not an important factor in adultery, why even bother with female circumcision? The theory is that if a woman’s sexual pleasure is reduced she’ll be less motivated to sleep around. Where do you think this idea came from? I imagine the reason why it’s done so young is that women would fight like hell if they entirely understood what they were giving up. Anyway, I think you grossly misunderstand the reality of traditional agricultural life. They are people just like us, with the same basic motivations as us. In between the hunger and disease, they have plenty of moments of joy- dancing, delighting in how cute their babies are, playing games, singing, having religious experiences, talking with good friends, eating delicious meals (when possible) and screwing the heck out of each other. It gets REALLY boring during the agricultural off season. Sex is one way to pass the time. It’s really not that different. This idea that women do not particularly enjoy or seek out sex is a cultural one, and it varies greatly from culture to culture (although there is less variation in agricultural societies- the bulk of human history that we regularly discuss- due to inheritance patterns related to land use). You’ve seized on to this idea and tried to shove it into some neo-Darwinian pop-evolutionary-psychology dogma. But you show very little understanding of the reality of women’s lives and experiences. ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/64 "2011-03-18T19:47:12Z")
It’s fair to say that nobody here has presented solid evidence that non-monogamy was historically common. But nor has anybody presented solid evidence to the contrary. Saying “the penalties were severe, so it must not have happened commonly” does not count as evidence. The genetic evidence doesn’t show that most females were monogamous, as pointed out above. And we don’t have genetic evidence for the stone age. Most evolutionary biologists who think about this sort of thing believe that “infidelity” (for lack of a better term) has been a force in human evolution. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/65 "2011-03-18T22:13:02Z")
Of course, royal records are meaningless exceptions. Nobody’s going to beat the crap out of the king’s favourite main squeeze because she’s your wife; the king may not be amused. SImilarly, IIRC, you could not name the king as a correspondent in a divorce suite way back when, since it was HIS court. As for non-king situations, they wer dealt with the same as here only worse. In 2011, you diveorce the \*\*\*\*\* and tell everyone what a \*\*\*\*\* she was. In those days, if you did anything public about a cheating wife - murder or divorce -the rest of your peer group laughed at you; and reputation was important. I suspect most problems were handled quietly, unless the wife made it too difficult to publicly ignore. Henry VIII, BTW, divorced his 4th wife, Anne of Cleves, without consumating the marriage. Of course, by then he was already a joke in the rest of Europe. The excuse he gave was that he questioned her purity “because her breasts were not those of a maid”. The public percetion was that she wasn’t pretty enough to float his balloon; whereas teenage Jane Howard was plenty hot enough for him and quite a few others. The usual statistic I’ve heard for “paternity errors” is 10% to 3%, depending on what we’re counting. the 20% is usually for people who have some suspsicin anyway. There’s the apocryphal story of the London school teacher who assigned a homework on blood types only to have 10% of the class find that their paternal attribution was incorrect. OTOH, one analysisof the 10% said that there were a number of other causes (quiet adoptions, etc.) where the paternity was incorrect but it was not hidden infidelity. Read the unexpurgated Arabian Nights. Where western society has an image of women as either angels or sluts (and sluts cause the problems), arabian society seems to think of women as horny human beings who will jump at the opportunity to have sex if they can avoid getting caught - just like men. Instead of drumming into women social mores that leave them with warped self-images about what they feel, it simply locks women up and threatens them with stoning. ---
**Author:** ![giuseppgold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/51bf81/32.png) [@giuseppgold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/giuseppgold)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/66 "2011-03-20T20:53:24Z")
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**Author:** ![giuseppgold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/51bf81/32.png) [@giuseppgold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/giuseppgold)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-nervousness-around-the-opposite-sex/574616/67 "2011-03-20T22:19:41Z")
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