This is going to be a long post here, but the implication made in the post below just burns me up and I need several paragraphs to properly debunk it (no offense In Spiration):
Jealousy in men can be seen as an evolved psychological adaptation that operates to reduce the chance of sexual infidelity in a partner, and reduce the chance of misdirected investment (even the act of mating typically requires substantial investment of resources, and loss of the opportunity to invest these in courting other mates; Buss, 1994).
If a male were to tolerate sexual infidelity and continue to invest resources into a rival male’s offspring, he would incur the ‘double’ genetic penalty of both failing to reproduce and ‘wasting’ resources on assisting a rival’s reproduction. Humans have few offspring, each requiring substantial investment of resources - any child sired by another man represents the loss of a substantial proportion of expected reproductive capacity (Buss, 1994).
Jealousy in women is significantly different in its motivation and intentions since female mammals do not suffer from uncertainty as to the identity of their offspring, and sexual infidelity per se is not a problem. The problem for a female is to secure investment to help in rearing offspring, and jealousy is primarily concerned with ensuring that the male partner directs his investment efforts towards the woman’s own offspring. So female jealousy is less concerned with the act of sexual infidelity and more with the danger of a male partner transferring his affections (and resources) to another female (Wiederman & Allgeier, 1993; Buss, 1994). Hence selection pressures have led to different cues that stimulate the emotion of jealousy in men and women: men primarily fear physical infidelity (the partner having sexual intercourse with another man) while
women primarily fear emotional infidelity (the partner falling in love with another woman) (Townsend, 1995; Geary et al, 1995; Mullen & Martin, 1994).
This excerpt is correct insomuch as it addresses the very legitimate concerns of men. However, it contains one very fatal flaw that undermines the supposed validity of the double-standard: ** It fails to examine the investment needs of the female, and how male promiscuity is responsible for a reduction of her resources**, and why this naturally translates into her (very logical, I might add) desire for male fidelity.
For my rebuttal to this to be understood, we would have to agree to look at marriage as an exchange of responsibilities: The woman agrees to both bear and raise the child(ren) of the man, and he in turn agrees to use his resources to support her those children. It is a fair exchange, in which both parties benefit.
Now let’s say hypothetically that the woman in this marriage agrees to be faithful to the man. She is a woman of integrity, and resists all temptation out of respect for him, so that he can feel secure in the fact that the children he raises are his. But, the man decides that it is not necessary for him to be faithful, and pursues sexual relations with other women. He has a few affairs, and nothing comes out of them at first (except time away from his family and the monetary expenditure on gifts he may have bought these women), but then….one of the women falls pregnant. He now has child with a woman other than his wife. He can either
(A) ignore or run away from the result of his actions, leaving the woman and child to fend for themselves, or (B) be a man of honor and responsibility and agree to support them. If he does A, then he is a selfish and weak-minded individual, who is not fit to lead anyone, let alone a wife and children. If he does B, then he at least displays a good intention, but has unfortunately now left his wife in an unfair situation, because:
- She now has to accept that, even though he promised when they got married that 100% of his resources would go to her, she and her children will now only receive 3/4 of that money. 1/4 of that money is now deducted in terms of child support. Bad enough, right? But maybe she’s just being “greedy.”
Fast-forward a bit….he still believes that male fidelity is “not as important” as female fidelity, and continues chasing other women. Not so surprisingly, he gets another woman pregnant. If he continues with option B, then:
- His wife now has to accept that, despite their original agreement, she and her children will now only receive two thirds of his paycheck. She’s really angry now, but she forgives him and tries her best to deal with the reduction of income. She cuts coupons, no longer gets her hair cut at the salon, and is extra thrifty with her general spending.
Another woman, another pregnancy, and soon the wife is miserable:
- She now has only 35%-45% of her husband’s income coming to her and her children (the children she promised would be his and his only), and really doesn’t have an extra penny for anything. She’s OK with not be able to spend money on herself, but now her children have only the bare minimum. They can’t join after-school activities because there’s no extra money for tennis rackets, ballet slippers, or hockey sticks. She has to explain to them that they can’t take a family vacation this year and go to Disneyworld. They can’t look forward to buying a couple of new outfits for school. She now really resents her husband, and no longer holds a shred of respect for him.
The unhappy end to the “logical” Double Standard.
If people are not likely to give much consideration to the plight of his wife, perhaps they would at least consider the broader implications of this attitude, and how it affects society as a whole. If the man hasn’t learned a lesson and still holds to the ridiculous notion that male infidelity has no negative bearings on the family, what inevitably happens is that there are 5,6,7, etc. broken homes, who are *all *living in poverty, because his resources can only be split so many ways. And this is somehow “less bad” than an unfaithful wife, who realistically has a much lower probability of amassing a number of illegitimate children?
So yes, women fear a man’s emotional infidelity, and why is that? Precisely because it has the capacity to turn into actual *physical *infidelity, resulting in a child that is not hers, and who will subsequently consume resources that should rightfully go to her and her own offspring! Men don’t want to raise another man’s child, that is understandable – and women don’t want the man’s money to be spent on the child of another woman, while she and hers go without.
End of rant.
:curtsey:
. So maybe this is part of it, as my experience is radically different that some of the other women on this thread. Is that there are many different ways that women/girls approach their sexuality, so one way might not click with some will with others. So it is more difficult to reach them as a whole.
To state that men face more risk than women, and to set forth an effort to control the behavior of one women only, is to take only male risk into consideration and be biased in their favor.