tyler: this could turn into an entirely other argument, but one essential aspect of power is the ability to actually refuse an arrangement or leave it entirely, which due to religious and other constructs, is fairly impossible for many of the women to take advantage of. Its quite possible that people are satisfied with their predicament, but they don't have power as an individual or as equal to the males in choosing mates themselves.
GS: it has nothing to do with how I wish to live. Its numbers. I'm saying yes largely everyone wishes to have multiple partners, I agree and clearly most people are not capable of that, otherwise there would be no reason to be mystified that people still maintain marriages or that everyone wasn't doing everyone. Give the fact that people have options, including yourself to indeed have things on the side or in the open, there is no doubt that there is an intrinsic desire to have long lasting partners, and that there are biological desires are worth sacrificing. Whether suppressing these desires results in problems is not really the same issue as whether we desire monogamy or not.
I understanding very well that your perspective is framed by anti-abortion and similar type philosophies. What I said was this isn't your culture....nor is it the culture of France that holds these beliefs so claiming that i think was fairly disingenuous . The only cultural thing might be that pro-life in the US means anti-abortion, as pro-choice people believe one can either have life or not, so they are the ones that are open to people doing what they wish with their bodies, whereas traditional religious groups that makes up most of the pro-life movement....not so much and fairly stuck on the monogamy end.
Just because there are plenty of problems associated with monogamy (most of which being augmented by modern situations) does not change that people don't function well with other arrangements either. As for the dog eat dog thing, that was your term and i'm expressed what it means in terms of this original topic. Rarely do I pull the 'how it is done in nature thing" but :raw: had a good point that I ran with which and Tyler concedes that in a small setting with very few available partners, not every person can be polygamous, so it can't very well be the absolute design for all humans prior to the formation into societies.
