Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Tuesday, March 2. 2010

Are men "naturally" monogamous?

A charming female figure affects men like a drug.


A dinner partner asked me "Are men naturally monogamous?" on Saturday. What a silly question. "Of course they aren't."


Men are obviously programmed to want to have a good time spreading their DNA around willy nilly, as it were, but, at the same time, normal men are capable of forming these strange things we call "relationships," of forming sturdy and deep attachments, of developing strong character restraints, and of living by moral codes and committments to others.


We often refer to those latter things as core aspects of "manliness" in our culture: loyalty, honor, dependability, reliability, responsibility, self-control, providing support and family defence and all that. Otherwise, a guy is just a teenager. The combination of the former and the latter is part of the male challenge. (Females have their own set of life dilemmas.)


Still, these "naturally" questions I get always raise the basic problem: How does one discuss "natural" for a naturally culture-building and society-building animal like man? The discussion always becomes circular.


Freud was not the first person to address the topic, but he did his best.

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:30 | Comments (9) | Trackback (1)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

Immature Men
I see that George Will wrote a piece, The Basement Boys -The making of modern immaturity, which echoes the themes I mentioned in my post this week, Are men "naturally" monogamous? Will wearily concludes: Last November, when Tiger Woods's mis
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Mar 04, 20:39

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

A man wants a wife who shows that she's satisfied with him.

Sexwise, one woman is as good as another. That's the famous male low standards, which is what after all gives women a chance in the first place. Most women are not great deals otherwise.

So if his wife isn't showing she's happy with him, the man begins to think: maybe another woman.
#1 rhhardin (Link) on 2010-03-02 16:55 (Reply)
Hah!
Borrow from the Progressives' Moral Code and go forth and pollinate. Ask any Fem, she'll tell you how capable the Op-Gen is of taking care of itself.

Intrude not on their self-sufficiency; damnatioin falls on your head for merely suggesting a blurring of the facade.

Let them not come crying when the uterus is full. Choices made-choices lived.
#2 Vermont Woodchuck (Link) on 2010-03-02 18:29 (Reply)
If chastity is unmanly, then Boy George is a stud.

To be intoxicated by the smell of a woman is to be a man. To endeavor to screw every woman on earth is to miss the gift of being a man.
#3 ccoffer on 2010-03-02 22:20 (Reply)
The appeal to "nature" is a Gramscian stalking-horse.

The underlying, specious assertion is that somehow our baser, chimp-like "natures" are more authentic than our uniquely human qualities (loyalty, etc).

But although the Gramscian wants to discard those human qualities that point towards morality - palming them off as cultural constructs - they are just as "natural" to our species as baser hormonal drives, and present in every society we create.
#4 Ben-David on 2010-03-03 11:56 (Reply)
HooBoy!!! Base hormonal drives are a hyaline fabric stretched over a fantasy construct devised by a woman to explain why she can't get a date.
That's like the lede on the CNN story "Is Nature Out of Control?"
#4.1 Vermont Woodchuck (Link) on 2010-03-03 19:50 (Reply)
Sexwise, one woman is as good as another.Well, no.

What it's about is finding out how good one woman is compared to another.

Which explains not only the "playa" behavior but also the "he never called" phenomenon.
#5 McGehee (Link) on 2010-03-03 17:01 (Reply)
...and I HATE non-HTML formatting.
#5.1 McGehee (Link) on 2010-03-03 17:03 (Reply)
Say this is in response to no one in particular but just to say that I think that Maggie's Farm is a great blog. However I would love to show my sisters and mom some things on here but I can't due to the "sexy" pictures y'all post on here from time to time. I also believe that the pics detract from the overall aesthetics of an otherwise great site.

Thanks and keep up the great info on politics and culture.

Gabriel J. Benton
#6 Gabriel J. Benton on 2010-03-05 14:23 (Reply)
A good opportunity for sisters and mom to learn about sexy pictures.
#6.1 rhhardin (Link) on 2010-03-05 17:47 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.