[Zsych]

The female isn't necessarily weaker even among other mammals.

I wonder if the case for humans is a result of selection and evolution.

Among more social/empathic people, the weak are often protected. I wonder if the softer/weaker/prettier women were more often protected than the stronger ones that could take on more male roles. I wonder if people formed strong bonds with them more rarely so that those genes didn't become dominant in the gene pool.

The division of labor by gender, might've just been a strategy that was altogether more efficient than the alternative approaches, and so groups that achieved their equilibrium and moved forward with those strategies, survived where others did not.

(this isn't really to imply anything specific about current society - a lot of circumstances are different and what is optimal may be quite different)

[Shadizar]

Well you can watch the fifteen minute cut
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; or you can watch the whole forty-five minute
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.

[Zsych]

You have to see human development and preferences as pretty much the same kind of thing.

Its interesting though that we've evolved intellects that make us question our instincts and design
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... ahh, and noisy females. It is so much more fun having sex with a woman who obviously seems to be enjoying it.

(and sex once an hour - the horror... and manipulative, sex using, females even among chimps
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)

A lot of primates will exchange food for sex (prostitution), show power with their sexuality, express friendship with their sexuality...

Its awesome how people think so highly of human sexual behaviors and we have this
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[Storm]

It's true that men are generally stronger than women (about 40%). However, they are not that much stronger in comparison to other species, like gorillas (male is 300% bigger than females). It's also true that while work is often divided by gender, the exact nature of the work has changed. And most all work before the industrialized age involved some kind of hard labor. So, while women may have done work that was less physically demanding than men, it wasn't that much less hard - otherwise we'd see a sex difference that is much more pronounced. One also has to consider that much the female body is geared toward pregnancy. Women are 25% fat compared to men's 15%, because women need fat for pregnancy, not because men thought women with 25% fat were prettier.

[Zsych]

I expect there have been all manner of strange pressures including what men or women thought they wanted.

The human pregnancy thing is also interesting - why we'd make only one child on average as opposed to several (probably lower chance of successful pregnancies for women who had multiple kids in the past). The mortality rate for young being what it was, meant women had to be pregnant more of their lives to sustain the population and that too would have affects on societies.

I think the fact that we can't seem to find love quite so easily might also be normal - too strong an attachment or a tendency towards such would be too harmful if the people you were related to were lost, so the tendency to only invest so much, may also be a natural consequence of our evolution.

[Storm]

	Originally Posted by Zsych To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The human pregnancy thing is also interesting - why we'd make only one child on average as opposed to several (probably lower chance of successful pregnancies for women who had multiple kids in the past).

I think this has to do with the long childhood of humans. The longer it takes a child to learn and become independent, the less children an adult can have. Fish lay hundreds of eggs because once they lay them, they are done with their parenting duties. Humans have the longest childhood of any species - each child has to be carefully guarded and taught for many years. It also explains why people raise children in groups or families and males tend to stick around to help raise them.

[Zsych]

Personally I consider boys being raised by single mothers to nearly be a disaster.

As for women - I think that women could also have become bigger to support producing and supporting more children. Maybe have developed the ability to produce more milk, etc. Except that they didn't... or rather, if they did, those versions of humanity did not survive or at least did not proliferate much.

... You have to wonder what a human child allowed to grow to physical maturity (of sorts) rather than being born prematurely as we are, might be like. Leaving a kid in an incubator for an extra year is probably not something anyone would be willing to try.

[Shadizar]

Barring lack of provision or genetic disorders; women produce the exact amount of milk they need to. If they need to produce enough to feed six fat babies, they will do just that.

I don't see women growing much larger, their hips are already maxed out to make childbirth possible and still accommodate an upright posture. Larger body will create more stress on the hips; more stress and/or wider hips mean a hunched posture. Sexy.

[fwiffo]

	Originally Posted by Zsych To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Among more social/empathic people, the weak are often protected. I wonder if the softer/weaker/prettier women were more often protected than the stronger ones that could take on more male roles. I wonder if people formed strong bonds with them more rarely so that those genes didn't become dominant in the gene pool.

It's interesting that you start with this distinctly male perspective. Another way to look at it is that women aren't weak. Women are normal, and men are an exaggerated sexual characteristic of strength.

This is probably more accurate given the way that sexual selection works in other species, with stronger, flashier males competing with one another in order to mate with females. And over time, the males' sex characteristics become increasingly exaggerated. Muscles require a large caloric intake both to build up and to maintain and would probably indicate access to resources for childrearing.


Anyway, the empathetic thing doesn't work. A gene for "weakness" that is sex specific would have to be located on the X chromosome. This gene would be present in the X chromosome in men, and would be maladaptive for them.

	Originally Posted by Zsych To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	As for women - I think that women could also have become bigger to support producing and supporting more children. Maybe have developed the ability to produce more milk, etc. Except that they didn't... or rather, if they did, those versions of humanity did not survive or at least did not proliferate much.

The ability to store fat would be essential to this role, and as women have a higher fat body content, I'd say this has happened.

[Vagrant]

	Originally Posted by Zsych To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The female isn't necessarily weaker even among other mammals.

	It's true that men are generally stronger than women (about 40%). However, they are not that much stronger in comparison to other species, like gorillas (male is 300% bigger than females).

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In humans, sexual dimorphism is relatively small, meaning that there is less direct male-male competition. In species where there is a lot of direct male-male competition, you get huge males (IE gorillas or seals), elaborate weapons (antlers or horns) intended for combat (Rams, elk), or elaborate displays (many songbird plumages, peacocks, lion manes, etc).

In humans, it's more likely there's sperm competition between males -- testes size in humans is fairly large when controlling for size compared next to other species (gorillas have tiny testes, for example, despite being such large animals). In addition, testes size is also related to male-female competition. Animals that bond for life have smaller testes in the males. Animals that have short mating bonds (or short mating periods) have large testes. Many small rodents have gigantic testes relative to body for this reason, shrews in particular (a professor of mine once joked that shrews are basically testicles with legs).

	Among more social/empathic people, the weak are often protected. I wonder if the softer/weaker/prettier women were more often protected than the stronger ones that could take on more male roles. I wonder if people formed strong bonds with them more rarely so that those genes didn't become dominant in the gene pool.

The genes that affect females affect males, but the converse is not true. If females are getting weaker, so are males. However, if men are getting stronger, that does not mean the women are getting stronger. Both genders have the X chromosome. Only males have the Y chromosome.

	The division of labor by gender, might've just been a strategy that was altogether more efficient than the alternative approaches, and so groups that achieved their equilibrium and moved forward with those strategies, survived where others did not.

Division of labor is essential to any functioning society. Without farmers, shipping, factories, etc, today, there wouldn't be society as we know it. Gender was simply an easy way to divide labor. Since women were more essential than men for reproduction, it was an easy choice to give the males riskier tasks.

Originally Posted by Storm To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

It's also true that while work is often divided by gender, the exact nature of the work has changed. And most all work before the industrialized age involved some kind of hard labor. So, while women may have done work that was less physically demanding than men, it wasn't that much less hard - otherwise we'd see a sex difference that is much more pronounced. One also has to consider that much the female body is geared toward pregnancy. Women are 25% fat compared to men's 15%, because women need fat for pregnancy, not because men thought women with 25% fat were prettier.

Actually, in the Renaissance period, women that were slightly overweight by today's standards were considered EXTREMELY attractive, as that meant they had good child-bearing potential. Just look at some of the old paintings of
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. She would be considered "overweight" by today's standards.

	Originally Posted by Zsych To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I expect there have been all manner of strange pressures including what men or women thought they wanted.

The most interesting thing about human sexual dimorphism in my opinion, are human breasts. No other mammals show such clearly swollen mammary glands except humans. Some scientists hypothesize that the buttocks are a good indicator of fertility for doggy-style mating, but since humans switched to optimal missionary-style (from the ancestral doggy-style), breasts evolved to appear like buttocks (in order to attract males as a sign of fertility). An interesting hypothesis, but no solid proof yet.

	The human pregnancy thing is also interesting - why we'd make only one child on average as opposed to several (probably lower chance of successful pregnancies for women who had multiple kids in the past). The mortality rate for young being what it was, meant women had to be pregnant more of their lives to sustain the population and that too would have affects on societies.

Biology is all about limitations and tradeoffs.

With humans, there's a couple of tradeoffs. Elephants carry their young for a 22 month gestational period, but that's due to the sheer size of elephants.

Humans are moderately large animals, but our brains and bipedal nature are where the big issues are. In order for humans to have proper brain development, we actually are born with relatively small, soft skulls. It takes 3 years for the baby human's brain to mature to the level a newborn elephant might have at birth. It takes another 20 years for full brain development (very few species have that long of a developmental cycle). The reason is because the human female pelvis cannot accommodate a full-sized, hard skull passing through it. That would kill the woman. Likewise for the rest of the body -- thus human babies start off significantly more fragile than most animals. The human female pelvis is also small because we're bipedal -- quadruped animals have larger pelvises.

Also, when talking about only one offspring versus many, it's a question of energy and material investment. You cannot have a dozen large babies, because in pre-human history, there's not enough food to support that, and the mother is not physically capable of supporting that. If you had many small babies, it's theoretically possible, but a lot of quality would be lost along the way. Compare, say, an
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to the
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. The albatross has only a few babies in its lifetime, but they live for much longer, and are capable of many greater feats than the common pigeon babies. Plus, fewer children means more
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in each individual child.

Relevant Wikipedia is relevant:
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r/K selection theory posits that species have to choose between quality (K) and quantity (r).

Edit: There's another theory which makes more of a triangular spectrum (rather than a linear spectrum). Let me see if I can remember it/find it on wikipedia.

Edit2: 30 minutes later, finding nothing on wikipedia or hints on google, I looked through some of my old notes for my natural resources ecology class. The 3 axes are r, K, and variable environment development -- some organisms will develop slowly in a nutrient rich environment (similar to K) but will develop quickly in a poor environment (similar to r). There is a triangular spectrum for these 3 axes, humans land closer to K selected. Certain fish species are closer to variable environment selected, and many weedy species are r selected.

Originally Posted by Storm To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I think this has to do with the long childhood of humans. The longer it takes a child to learn and become independent, the less children an adult can have. Fish lay hundreds of eggs because once they lay them, they are done with their parenting duties. Humans have the longest childhood of any species - each child has to be carefully guarded and taught for many years. It also explains why people raise children in groups or families and males tend to stick around to help raise them.

Relevant Wikipedia is relevant:
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[Autumnleaf]

These days I've noticed many women are more than happy to put out if you don't bore them. I was chatting with the lady who gave me a haircut today and she started talking flirty with me and she mentioned how she was a single parent and all. Then she asked me if I was married and I said I was and she laughed and said she was too for longer than I've been.

[firebee]

	Originally Posted by Vagrant To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Both genders have the X chromosome. Only males have the Y chromosome.

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, though, contains relatively little data compared even to the X, much less the other chromosomes.

Further, we can observe readily enough that a person may be phenotypically male but XX -- transmen, for instance, being the most convenient examples. Given that we can administer testosterone to a female-bodied person who is likely to be physically indistinguishable from any other female-bodied person, and have that person develop male muscle, fat, and body hair distribution (among many other things), this rather cuts down on how much essential male-body-type-making data can possibly be contained on the chromosome that they don't have.

[Vagrant]

The Y chromosome, though, contains relatively little data compared even to the X, much less the other chromosomes. Further, we can observe readily enough that a person may be phenotypically male but XX -- transmen, for instance, being the most convenient examples. Given that we can administer testosterone to a female-bodied person who is likely to be physically indistinguishable from any other female-bodied person, and have that person develop male muscle, fat, and body hair distribution (among many other things), this rather cuts down on how much essential male-body-type-making data can possibly be contained on the chromosome that they don't have.

Correct.

The Y-chromosome mostly contains master switch genes. Very few proteins are actually encoded on it, which is why it's so small.

[firebee]

	Originally Posted by Vagrant To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Correct. The Y-chromosome mostly contains master switch genes. Very few proteins are actually encoded on it, which is why it's so small.

Yep, thing about master switches is that they can get jumped sometimes
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Although I suppose SRY translocation is cheating.

Still, I think it's a useful thing to consider "male" and "female" in this case as being how much one is exposed to various androgens and estrogens, and at what times -- both of these serve functions in both male and female people, normal people show signs of influence from both, and the way in which they respond is presumably inherited from both their male and their female ancestors.

[thod]

Humans are not strong and they are not fast. However their upright gait makes them very efficient runners. They are the sweatiest of all mammals and they have no body hair. Humans evolved as persistence hunters and this technique can still be seen with the bushmen. Hunting consists of chasing an antelope until it drops of heat exhaustion under the African sun. Our super cooling system means we outlast it.

The problem is that a pregnant woman cannot run mile after mile. Nor can she leave her infants to potential predators whilst she is away. Fortunately she doesn't have to if a man will do this for her. Men have better visiospatial skills because that fits their role of chasing things, throwing spears etc. Since the woman is not hunting, she does not need these skills and instead optimises for her role. It is far more useful for her to detect signs of stress in an infant than to hit a target with an arrow. There are still many tasks for her to perform. Gathering, preparing food for her infants, scraping leather etc. This optimisation, with each playing the role, leads to a superior performance than two could be achieved by two identical individuals.

It must be remembered that every son is carrying his mothers genes and every daughter her fathers. The genes are hosted by both sexes as they pass through the generations. That genome has to produce the best body for whichever gender it finds itself in. So although it may produce a wide shouldered aggressive male this time, next time it may have to produce a wide hipped female.

[Vagrant]

	Humans evolved as persistence hunters and this technique can still be seen with the bushmen. Hunting consists of chasing an antelope until it drops of heat exhaustion under the African sun.

Actually, usually with bushmen it involves hitting the antelope with poison darts or enough spears to make it fall. Granted, this takes time and some running.

	It must be remembered that every son is carrying his mothers genes and every daughter her fathers

Ummm....

Every son carries his father's Y chromosome. No questions asked there. The other chromosomes are subject to recombination though. Every daughter of his is guaranteed to have his only X chromosome. The son gets one of the two copies of his mother's X's, and the rest through recombination. Same for the daughter.

Y chromosomes only pass from father to son.

[Claudus]

Thought most of your post was interesting, and well reasoned...

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Actually, in the Renaissance period, women that were slightly overweight by today's standards were considered EXTREMELY attractive, as that meant they had good child-bearing potential. Just look at some of the old paintings of To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. . She would be considered "overweight" by today's standards.

Do you have any proof of this statement? I have spent quite a bit of time investigating this claim, and have not found anything to support it.

1) I am not expert, but I'd say at least some of those images the woman has a BMI under 25 (not overweight by today's standards).

2) Peter Paul Rubens painted obese women, and started a small trend, but this does not mean that overweight women were considered more attractive than women who were not overweight in the general population during the Renaissance.

3) I think that human male physical attraction metrics are primarily driven by instinct to mate with healthy females based on my own experiences and observations, overweight women are less healthy and therefore less attractive (same for underweight women).

4) Human sexual attraction has a psychological component that can cause associations (fetishes) to develop towards things when they are associated with sex, but in most instances this will not override basic instinctive attraction.

[BostonIan]

The partner with the greatest burden in child-bearing is more reluctant to child-bear; the low-burden partner is more eager. The eagerness/reluctance dynamic leads to Eager-Eager competition and Reluctant choosiness; both lead to larger Eagers over time.

Eager is but not necessarily male, Reluctant is not necessarily female. In birds where the males hatch eggs, roles are reverse-usual.

[zibber]

I think we are forgetting about strong women and weak men. Because they don't fit into the schema. So we figure we'll make them out to be anomalies.

[fwiffo]

	Originally Posted by zibber To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I think we are forgetting about strong women and weak men. Because they don't fit into the schema. So we figure we'll make them out to be anomalies.

Doesn't that make them anomalies by definition? Are you making the point that variation within a population can be greater than variation between populations? (The strongest female is stronger than the weakest male?) Since evolution is observed as changes across an entire population, it's not terribly useful to pick at the anomalies as they represent a tiny percentage of the gene pool, and if they were adaptive, then those anomalies would have spread to a larger proportion.

[Vagrant]

Originally Posted by Claudus To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Do you have any proof of this statement? I have spent quite a bit of time investigating this claim, and have not found anything to support it. 1) I am not expert, but I'd say at least some of those images the woman has a BMI under 25 (not overweight by today's standards). 2) Peter Paul Rubens painted obese women, and started a small trend, but this does not mean that overweight women were considered more attractive than women who were not overweight in the general population during the Renaissance. 3) I think that human male physical attraction metrics are primarily driven by instinct to mate with healthy females based on my own experiences and observations, overweight women are less healthy and therefore less attractive (same for underweight women). 4) Human sexual attraction has a psychological component that can cause associations (fetishes) to develop towards things when they are associated with sex, but in most instances this will not override basic instinctive attraction.

Slightly overweight in a woman actually means the child will be healthy, and less likely for the mother to have complications during pregnancy. Not a huge overweight, mind you, but heavier than the modern "ideal" of skinny.

I'm trying to find some more renaissance paintings that aren't portraits, since portraits were meant to be accurate.


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(actually interesting how differently Da Vinci paints Madonna in different ways)

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In short, their ideal was heavier than today's ideal, although it borderlines what the BMI would consider as healthy and overweight.

[BellaBianca]

	In short, their ideal was heavier than today's ideal, although it borderlines what the BMI would consider as healthy and overweight.

I don't really think this means more than that slightly overweight women came from wealthy families, and wealth would be attractive.

(Michelangelo doesn't count, by the way: He painted men and put breasts on them.)

[Claudus]

	Originally Posted by Vagrant To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Slightly overweight in a woman actually means the child will be healthy, and less likely for the mother to have complications during pregnancy. Not a huge overweight, mind you, but heavier than the modern "ideal" of skinny.

Do you have any support for this statement? From what I've found that is not correct...


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Fact: You need to ovulate to get pregnant. Since seriously overweight or underweight women don't ovulate as often as other women, this could be a problem when it comes to conception. Very underweight women have a higher risk of giving birth to a low–birth weight baby (a baby who's born at under five pounds and who may be at increased risk of experiencing some potentially serious health problems). Overweight women encounter more pregnancy complications including a higher risk of preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, requiring a labor induction and/or a C-section and giving birth to extremely large babies, babies with neural tube defects, babies with heart defects or babies who are at increased risk of developing diabetes later in life.

I'm sure there were many overweight women at different points in history, I just don't see any proof that overweight women were considered more attractive by the general population. If the entire argument for this position is based on paintings, I think it's a very weak argument. In 300 years are people going to think that 20th century men were attracted to cubist women?

I don't think most men think anorexic women are more attractive than women with a healthy BMI. I think thinness is used as a marketing tool aimed at women to exaggerate slightly overweight / almost overweight women... it's a lot more effective to show a 40 pound differential than a 10 pound differential to make women feel insecure and unattractive and willing to buy into whatever is being marketed.

[Deliberator]

	Originally Posted by Vagrant To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Actually, usually with bushmen it involves hitting the antelope with poison darts or enough spears to make it fall. Granted, this takes time and some running.

The technique thod described is thought to be the "original", with the more advanced or aggressive techniques you described being more recent.


I don't think anyone else has mentioned that the result of a very strong and muscular female would be detrimental to childbearing because flexibility is key for a woman to give birth. Big tight muscles are not conducive to joint mobility.

Obviously the male can evolve strength for all practical purposes; and it goes along quite nicely with the instinct to protect females and one's territory.

[phoboser]

	Originally Posted by BellaBianca To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I don't really think this means more than that slightly overweight women came from wealthy families, and wealth would be attractive.

I agree that the ideal represented is not of sexual attractiveness but of marriageability - which was dependent in large part on the wealth of the woman's family.

The corpulence might not even be representative of what upper class women looked like. I bet they were normal weight while the lower class women were underweight or wiry, and were depicted that way to emphasize the class contrast.