645. The Implications Of Men Fighting Over Women

645.    The Implications Of Men Fighting Over Women 

I recently read an article, which while mainly about another topic mentions men fighting over women.  

"NC: I reported in my 1988 article, “Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population” (Science 239: 985-992) that unokais (men who had killed others) had 3 times the average number of children than same-age non-unokais and 2.5 times the average number of wives."

"I found the Yanomamö quite violent, without any outside provocation making them so, and that their violence revolved around competition for women. Specifically, there was chronic and sometimes violent competition to obtain nubile, young females."

"Now if a scientist studying yaks, bullfrogs, bats, deer, salamanders, or any non-human animal stated that they competed for opportunities to mate, no one in biology would have taken that to be anything other than an accurate observation. But if you say that about human beings, it becomes “lurid speculation.”"

Source: 

Savage Science: Excerpt of an Interview of Napoleon A. Chagnon
by Frank Miele, Senior Editor, Skeptic Magazine
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-03-06/


Being a woman, I perceive men, who fight over access to and control over women, as a hazard. 

A not partnered man experiencing sexual dishomeostasis often encounters obstacles between his instinctive urges and the access to a woman's body.    Depending upon circumstances, these obstacles are varieties of who controls this access.  Men's methods how to react to these obstacles depend not only upon the factual control, but also upon an individual man's attitude towards women.

1.   When women are controlled and owned by men.   

Under different social and historical circumstances, there are and have been many situations, where women are and were under the control of men, enforced by structural power and physical strength.   This control can be legal or illegal, the controlling men can be family members, religious gurus, autocratic leaders, owners of slaves, captors, abductors, kidnappers, who restrict the access to the women under their power.  
Access can only be obtained by fighting, payment or clever means of outwitting and overriding this control.    Any transfer of who controls a woman is between men, while the woman herself has no influence.

Depending on his general attitude towards women, a man's congruent behavior respects or denies the woman's own wishes to have control over herself. 

1.1.  A man freeing a respected women attempts to win her consent by creating emotional attachment and commitment and he disagrees with any man's usurped alleged right to control a woman.   History, fairy tales, fables and novels are full of such stories.  

1.2.  A man with the attitude of subjectively justified objectification and commodification acquires control over a woman as over the possession of a utility.    Having the delusion that acquiring control creates unlimited rights, he abuses women in disregard of their own wishes.   The victory of one man over the other determines, who will be the one imposing the abuse upon women, who themselves have no chance to avoid this..    

2.   When women have themselves the legal and/or factual control over their own body.  

In this situation, a rational man respecting and appreciating a woman as an equal partner with her own capacity to decide does not fight or compete with other men over her.    He recognizes that only the woman herself is entitled to deny or allow access to her body.   He knows that unless she needs to be freed from another man's illegal and unjustified control as in 1.1., every agreement for any interaction is strictly between him and her.   

As long as their behavior is correct and not breaking any preexisting freely chosen obligations, nobody else matters or has a right to interfere.   Even in the case of a cheating woman, she is herself responsible for the transgression.  The betrayed partner has a right to direct his consequences to her, but this does not justify to fight over her as if she were a stolen possession.

Fighting over women can have many forms.   While animals and some men fight by using physical violence, in modern societies men often compete by more subtle means.   But this still implies blatant disregard for women's ability to decide for themselves.
The story of the wager in entry 119 is a good example.    Even though in this event the woman apparently made her own choice, the circumstances were created by two men.  She was manipulated by them for the purpose of winning a wager.  

There is a very serious and dangerous fallacy in a man's thinking, if he competes and fights over a woman with another man, who has no factual legal or illegal control over her.   Such fighting implies a man's lack of respect and regard for the woman as a person.    

2.1.   Fighting over women implies a general justification of male control and dominance over women.    Instead of principally rejecting such control, men fight over who of them can have it.   

2.2.  Men fighting over a woman deprive her of the choice between all of them.   The loser usually is no more available to her.   Either the winner impedes the loser(s) to get near her, or they withdraw discouraged.   Even a winner, who has enough consideration to not attempt to control her, thus limits who other than he himself gets a chance to attempt winning her consent.  

2.3.  Men competing misrepresent themselves in their attempts to appear each better than the other.  This deprives her of a more realistic assessment of any of them, which would enable her rationally evaluate each of them compared with her needs.    Competing has the best result for those men with the most advanced skills as manipulators, bluffers and liars.  

2.4.  A man fighting over a woman often respects his rival more than he respects the woman.   In this case he fights mainly for the psychological benefits of winning against a valued opponent.  Winning is the main objective, the woman herself is not important.  

2.5.  Fighting means taking risks of being harmed and it means strain and effort.    Therefore the winner is inclined to feel entitled to his prize.   But winning the fight only removes another man as an obstacle, it does not automatically make the woman want him.
Some men are afflicted with the fallacy of wrongly assuming, that as the winners they are automatically attractive and wanted by the women.   

Thus they are prone to become a nuisance when not accepting the woman's rejection.
If such a man would realistically consider the probabilities of a woman's choice between consent and rejection, this would make fighting less attractive.  It would motivate him to attempt to win her directly instead and respect her choice.