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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36584 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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There are (conservative) cultures where it's considered semi-acceptable for married men to have sex outside the marriage. For example, I have met multiple women from Mexico who have expressed sentiments along the lines of "wives should never cheat, but if husbands cheat once in a while that's unfortunate but understandable."

Sure, plenty of wives would turn a blind eye to the husband visiting prostitutes on a business trip. And some cultures expect high-status men to have mistresses and think that that's part of marrying a high-status man. But it seems to me that going into it with the expectation of the husband cheating on her as a normal part of the marriage would be a deal breaker for most women in American culture, and that those women who think homosexuals should marry women would expect those men to treat their urges for other men the exact same way that they would treat their urges for other women.

I'm wary of the attempts to explain everything in terms of biology, but this clearly has evolutionary biology background. Man cheating on his wife, provided that he doesn't leave the family and spend too much resources on cheating, is a very low-risk thing. Wife cheating creates paternal uncertainty in the minimum, and the possibility of the family spending resources on the offspring the man has no genetical relationship to. Is it a surprise there's such an asymmetry here in some cultures (in fact, afaik, in many cultures)?

Re. the gay cheating side of the conversation: even taking STDs into account like someone mentioned, it does seem like "husband occasionally buggers some dude" is better for a woman's outcomes than "husband gets 2nd wife and kids to support, either legally or illicitly".

Most men's cheating doesn't go as far as "2nd wife" - in fact, many couldn't really afford it even if they wanted, but most wouldn't want it anyway. From this point of view, both hetero and homo cheating is driven by the same impulse - finding some experience or variety lacking in the monogamous marriage, without giving up the other benefits such an arrangement provides. And excepting STDs, in both cases it's low risk - unless the husband gets on the hook for child support or such. Indeed, with this consideration buggering some dude is probably lower risk, in general.

I was vaguely thinking of Afghanistan and other conservative cultures that nevertheless ended up with homosex on the side (maybe not entirely due to the Greeks invading them). And the competition from 2nd+ wives is a very real threat to women in some of those places.

It is a known phenomenon that males who are deprived of female company, either by being of low status or being in circumstances where there are just no females at all (army, ships, prisons), engage in homo-sex routinely, in almost any culture. I don't think it has anything to do with the Greeks, it's mere biology - male sexual drive is just too strong, and when you combine it with poor impulse control with is also common in such populations... In fact, in a very conservative culture it's also probably safer to bang a dude than to have sex with a female outside of marriage - that female likely has either a husband or father/brothers, and they would react very harshly against any such transgression. Again, nothing to do with Greeks here.

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