(feminist trigger warning)(individualist trigger warning)

RE: (https://www.reddit.com/…/renegotiating_the_marriage_contra…/ )

  1. Pretty good analysis. I’d recommend reading the origin and development of the family and property by Engels. That is a more accurate history. It’s short and well written.

  2. Biologically, females were treated as (and therefore were) our property under hostile competition, they were an exchange of property between males in the pastoral era’s development of formal property, and ‘love’ (mate selection by attraction) is historically, a luxury good (and rare) – even if terribly eugenic for selection purposes. The development of property is what allowed males to re-take control of reproduction from females.

  3. Polygamy was and is practiced by the majority of cultures, but all major religions and philosophies attempted to break this practice in order to ‘soak up’ the majority of ‘troublesome’ males who otherwise failed to reproduce (something like 30% of males failed to reproduce – although I have seen estimated numbers as high at 70%). And even once we encounter monogamy (property), something like 20-25% of births are caused by mates outside of marriage (which is a dirty secret that is showing up now that we have massive databases of family trees combined with genetics.)

  4. Human Females still demonstrate r-selection behavior, much less in-group protection (more cheating), and lower loyalty. They are practical creatures. For most of history women were considered the root of all evil, and it was only in the victorian era that we stated otherwise – although this compromises the majority of our current literature.

  5. One can position marriage as a compromise between reproductive strategies; or as a social convenience necessary for peace and prosperity; or as a epistemological necessity for the purpose of meritocratic calculation of reproductive utility, required of an advanced society and economy; Or all of the above. My standing concern is that women have more CONTROL than men do, and men higher RISK and shorter LIVES than women do. So to some degree, for us to persist, women remain a herd men control, or a herd other men control. Women are a resource – an expensive resource.

  6. So under INDIVIDUALISM it is difficult to make take the position that marriage is beneficial for either man or woman. Under NATIONALISM (or tribalism or kinship) it is difficult to conceive of a condition under which males retain access to females without the cooperation, assistance, defense, of other males.

  7. I want to protect my genes and my relations so I want my female kin to be free to do the best they can WITHOUT betraying my male relations control of the reproductive resource of women. In other words, private benefit of free reproduction is limited by public harm from free reproduction, because organization into groups matters.

I think the last is the least pleasant most accurate analysis.

And (unpleasantly) that is where I end up.