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Crowstep  1yr ago (worksinprogress.co)   1742 thread views

Why we Duel - Works in Progress

worksinprogress.co

Submission statement: Anthropologist William Buckner discusses the social purposes and methods of duelling in various societies.

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The addition of females has potential to disrupt the peace-making abilities of low-grade violence. In that scenario, I think it produces more violence rather than less.

Unless the woman, who has all the power (quite literally in this scenario) to reward or punish violence by keeping/removing contestants, chooses to prevent or punish violence. Which is the thing I am most interested in seeing play out! Keeping in mind that my theory is the Lead basically wants to end up engaged to a man she could marry at the end of the process; while I do think the contestants/leads are in it for fame, the best way to set yourself up for life fame-wise is to form a couple that stays together, have kids, etc.

The lead could send a man home after a fight even if he won, if she felt it was inappropriate to do so. She could probably send a man home early, before the fight even occurred. I suspect, logically, the group would quickly converge on moral rules for when fights are appropriate or inappropriate. Things like "If you challenge the same guy over the same thing twice, you're going home" or "if you're always getting into fights, you're going home" or "If a big former college football lineman challenges a scrawny programmer, he gets sent home (and maybe the programmer does too)." Or regulate reasons to start fights: "X claiming that Y said that he's only here to promote his Tequila Company" is good and Y has to fight for or apologize; but if X is trying to start a fight because "Y took my lunchmeat and ate it when he knew I was planning on eating it" then Y is under no obligation to accept.

Also keep in mind that the men themselves can pressure the Lead. Either hard power by Unionization plays, more common in recent seasons, where we've seen a group of men go to the Lead together and say "X is dangerous/abusive/mean, if you keep him we're all going to walk." Or by simply speaking to her about what's going on.

Unless the woman, who has all the power (quite literally in this scenario) to reward or punish violence by keeping/removing contestants, chooses to prevent or punish violence.

I guess we have different reads on women then. I would expect them to encourage as much violence as possible. "Let's you and him fight" is the oldest female dating strategy in the world.

I would think that at least in some cases there’d be a check on that. You could get a big, strong asshole that challenges the shit out of guys for slights real and imagined and proceeds to kick their asses because he was an amateur boxer or something. Is this the winning strategy? The Bachelorette devolving into a de facto amateur boxing championship?

Oh not at all, I think that is a very possible outcome. That's exactly why I find the possibilities fascinating. What level of violence would be attractive? At some point choosing for violence becomes maladaptive, but some degree of choosing violence is adaptive, where will it land?

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