About the evolution of unusual sexual behaviours

May 29, 2006: A couple of days ago, I posted a blog raising uncomfortable questions about why so many guys fantasized about their wives making love to some guy — boss, buddy etc. Why was such evolutionarily counterproductive behaviour as offering your own wife on a platter to some other dude such a tantalizing thought? Why was cuckold fantasy such a popular genre, was the question I raised. 

My touchstone is that unless a form of behaviour had evolutionary value, or at any rate had survival value, that would have died out, thanks to natural selection. After sleeping over the problem for a couple of days, I finally have it figured out. (Yeah, right! At this rate, you should elect me President of Planet Earth, because within a couple of years, I’ll come up with solutions to all problems, including global warming and the hole in the ozone layer!)

And while I’m at it, let me hazard a comment on how gay behaviour among both sexes made evolutionary sense, and helped the survival of those endowed with those instincts/impulses/desires. (Please don’t mind me, darlings!)
OK, here goes: For a few tens of thousand years back there in the prehistoric past, things were pretty rough, especially during the Ice Ages. Most infants that were born — say 99 out of hundred — never made it into their teens. Most teenagers — say 70 out of hundred — never made it to age 20. And if an exceptionally lucky and skilful individual made it into his 30s, he suffered the fate of Sourav dada and Sachin ie. loss of form, injuries, loss of face. And of course, a walk into the wolf-infested wilderness.

For a woman, her wherewithal for survival was the ability to snag, and then hold onto a mate who would protect her, father her children and then be a reliable provider till her children came of age ie. turned seven or eight. A high-status mate, such as the local warlord — or the boss of the cave, mountain, field, whatever — was her best bet for survival and propagation. As a result, the dominant male was never short of arm-candy.

Again, remember, the dominant male had an endless sexual appetite. His first choice would be nubile young females, virgins etc. — the pick of the season to bear his brood. It made a lot of sense to have half-a-dozen wives in his cave, assuming that his male cronies always brought in enough spoils to keep them all fed, clothed and warm. Why half-a-dozen? For one thing, because one or two of them were apt to die during childbirth, and those newborns, bearing his precious genes, could then be nursed by other wives along with their own infants. This made good sense to the mothers too, because it gave them assurance that if they died, their children had a fighting chance of going ahead.

To keep the big-chief happy, females learned to give handjobs and blowjobs when they were heavily pregnant, menstruating, suffering from infections etc. This had great value in ensuring their survival on a month-by-month basis. Women whose calcium resources were depleted by a couple of childbirths and nursing suffered from severe osteoporosis, and lost all their teeth. So they were not able to bear children, but could continue rearing the ones they had already brought into this harsh world. But were these toothless women banished into the wolf-infested wilderness by their brutal husband? Not if they were smart, because now they could give the most perfect blowjobs on earth! (By now, if the reader is a woman, she’s frothing at the mouth and wishing there was a way to strike me dead! Hey, chill, ladies! No offence meant! Really! ;) 

Pimping, prostitution and cuckoldery
Now what about the men who were not dominant, and what about the women who could not become part of the aforementioned charmed circle? Obviously, the harem would not welcome newcomers, because resources weren’t exactly plentiful, and a new female may bring in new diseases. They had good reasons for being insular!

However, try as they may, nothing can keep a good man down (if you’ll pardon the pun!) Try as they might, they could not keep the big boss within the confines of his cave, whenever he got the feeling that maybe other guys out there were having more fun than he was! So, every once in a while, he would step out of sight for half a day, just to see for himself.

He would be accompanied by his cronies a.k.a. securitywallahs, with the caveman equivalent of sten-guns. And every once in a while, this bunch would chance upon a non-dominant male and his mate trying to eke out a living and maybe bring up a child or two.

Well, now you have three scenarios:

Scenario 1: This family valiantly resists the junta, and the man and children are slaughtered. (The odds of their winning are so slim that I won’t even address that possibility. Call me negative if you like.)

Scenario 2: The family puts up some resistance, but the female capitulates. The boss mates with her somewhere in the bushes, and she returns home shaken and stirred. The family then decides to run away into the wilderness and take their chances, however slim.

Scenario 3: My money is on this one, because it shows sensible behaviour all around. The couple in the bushes sensed that the junta was approaching, quickly discussed the various alternatives, and husband, with rising excitement, suggests that his wife should perhaps give the power-guys the complete works. “In fact, make it so good that they keep coming back for more!” he suggests, now completely tumescent. “And maybe, at a strategic moment, you can put in a word for me… I could use a job with his army!” says he, before going out there, welcoming the junta home, and tactfully exiting from the back door with the kids for a pleasant stroll in the woods.

The result: contentment and prosperity all around as the chief and his men favour this household over all others, returning every week with gifts of food and clothes. Husband gets to eat sloppy seconds and join the workforce in the bargain. Children grow up with the right education, thanks to all those nature walks with Daddy. Everybody gets to live happily ever after! Nobody gets raped or dies!

There was a great premium even back then for thinking with a cool head!
As for how gay behaviour got genetically ingrained in us, here’s my theory…

If you were a dominant male, what sort of guys would you like to surround yourself with? Studs like yourself? Maybe, when you were young and sure of yourself… but as you grew older, you might choose to banish studs into the wilderness, just to keep them from fooling with your harem or trying to overthrow you!

No, the clear choice for second-in-command would be a lad who had no qualms about giving a decent blowjob or hand job after office hours, and looked maybe a teeny bit feminine too! However, little did the boss know that this young fellow, after winning his faith, would get really close to one or two of his wives too! Or maybe the aging overlord just looked the other way, because if he quarreled, his whole act would fall apart, and he would be overthrown by some other not-so-friendly bloke in his inner circle… like his disgruntled younger brother, for instance.

Again, gay genes and genes that favoured a diplomatic silence (or even actual enjoyment of kinky stuff) got furthered in the process.

As for lesbianism: it was clear that the women of the harem were there to pleasure the boss, and not vice-versa. So if the women themselves wanted some pleasure, to whom did they turn? Barring the availability of a handsome house guest or a trusted brother-in-law, they looked to each other for sisterly support. Any girl with the right attitude lived to a ripe old age. Anybody who disliked pleasuring the senior queens got eliminated in palace intrigues... or turned out to be the one who "accidentally" ate poisoned mushrooms for dinner.

All of us are the distillate of such an ancestry, where every man, woman and child knew what it took to survive and progress to the next block in the high-stakes snakes-and-ladders game. Those carrying too much baggage of morality perished by the wayside.

So now do you understand why we all are such libertines? Why, irrespective of age and sex, we look forward to seeing that flash of thigh on movies, and why, along with our morning cup of coffee, we eagerly flip through the sexy pictures in The Bombay Times ?

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