Discourse and gibbons

[Heike Bödeker]

Far from wanting to endorse any kind of physical mysticism (term coined by
Holmberg, Carl B. (1998): Sexualities and Popular Culture. (Foundations of
Popular Culture, 6) Thousand Oaks, CA / London / New Delhi: Sage) I think
it is necessary to point out that some of the aforementioned, put w/ all
due caution, ways of relating to each other, with primates have become
"biologicalized" in humans (most notably covert ovulation), so that it is,
so to speak, bracketed from the realm of the social and psychological, and
shouldn't in inter-species comparison be uncritically juxtaponed.

It isn't really any field of interest to me, so as a first starter I only
can offer the below reference w/ abstract.

Kitaakitammattsinohpoaawa,

Heike


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Perper, Timothy & Martha Cornog (1998): The biosocial evolution of human
sexuality. - Paper to be presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the
American Anthropological Association, Friday, December 4 1998,
Philadelphia, PA. Invited session, organizer, Victor C. de Munck,
"Permutations of Desire: Sex, Love, and the Longing for Intimacy." [c.f.
Fisher 1998]

Abstract:

Can we provide a substantive and adequate explanation for how human
sexuality evolved? First, biological evolution refers to transformations
occurring over geological time. Second, human sexuality is more than
copulation, and combines behavior, emotions, customs, and beliefs in
complex social, economic, cultural, and historical milieux. The crux is to
identify what changes must have occurred to take us from what we were to
what we are.

A useful starting point is to reconstruct the putative ancestor of the
hominid line as having social male-plus-female groups, as displaying
hormone-dependent female cyclicity in receptivity and proceptivity, and as
possessing some degree of male dominance and therefore limited access to
fertile adult females by subordinate males. The sapiens end point has
ovulation-independent receptivity, intense emotional erotic bonding between
individuals, a degree of male and female promiscuity, notions of gender and
gender roles, and considerable social (kin and non-kin) involvement in
ceremonies and rules centering on marriage, kinship, and reproduction.
Evolutionary biology offers several ways to identify what plausibly must
have happened to individual sexual physiology and psychology, and to group
structure and its biosocial bases, during these changes.

First is the emergence of desire for affiliation and bonding ("proto-eros")
as a way to assure pregnancy in an organism with increasingly cryptic
ovulation. Such bonding would also enhance food- and resource-sharing, as
well as create the basis for "affiliational ecstasy." A step like this is
also needed to explain the emergence of non-verbal and emotional correlates
of human sexuality, including erotic transcendence. Second is the
occurrence of fertile sexuality among adolescent females, because such
forms of neoteny (in the loose sense) would have enabled an evolutionary
escape from specialization, e.g., by reducing female sequestering by
dominant males. Third, tool-making by females (e.g., digging sticks, baby
slings) would provide females with ways to enhance their own fitness
without obligate dependence on males. Fourth, criteria of female choice
needed increasingly to center on male responsiveness to infertile but
receptive females, including male attentiveness and generosity. The step is
needed to explain why human courtship focuses so strongly on emotions and
traditions of bonding, affiliation, and shared work. Fifth, male
involvement with females needed to shift from purely reproductive to
economic and social, wherein males cooperated with each other and with
females to raise children. This step is needed because cryptic ovulation
and male-female promiscuity guarantee uncertain paternity, and amounts to
saying that such groups raised all children cooperatively. Finally, and
presumably with the emergence of language, specific kinship rules arose for
assigning specific males and females to each other, thereby to assign
possibly fictive but socially defined paternity.

Changes like these -- or something like them -- appear to be logically
necessary. Their details are lost in vast antiquity, but the method ­ which
deduces necessary steps of a transformation between presumed starting and
ending points -- seems to be very valuable for creating a plausible
evolutionary model of human sexual transformations.