I posted some time back about sexual frustration under Islam as a source of inspiration for terrorism. Gary Becker has argued that sexually-frustrated nobodies whose lives are going nowhere are a primary source of terrorist supply.
In poor Islamic societies – this NYT report documents the situation in Egypt - youth are turning to religious devotion as their possibilities for a decent career and marriage disappear. A youthful bulge in the population pyramid is causing an amplified religious bulge as frustrated youth drag their parents and governments with them toward fanaticism as a response to their hopeless economic situations and consequent low marriage prospects.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query sexual frustration. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query sexual frustration. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Polygamy & the unwanted males
I got a fair bit of adverse comment for a post I made on how gender-balanced Muslim societies could deal with the sexual frustration that must affect those males that miss out on a partner where polygamy is practiced.
I suggested this frustration might spill over into aberrant social attitudes, a preference for religious stupidity and even a leakage of young men into the ranks of the terrorists. They might even then delude themselves by believing they can eventually ‘get it off’ with the 72 virgins in heaven if they do their duty on earth by massacring some innocent civilians and non-believers.
The standard argument by Robert Frank is that polygamy advances the interests of women by increasing their scarcity value. I don't buy this in Muslim societies where a female is initially the property of her father which is, on marriage, transferred to her husband. Indeed one might argue that these oppressive institutional arrangements that treat women badly are endogenously determined by the demand for polygamy which would otherwise give them enhanced scarcity value.
Oppression is then a mechanism for reducing what would otherwise be increased bargaining power. Women just lose out big and are treated badly as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (and others) point out.
No-one could possibly say that women in Muslim societies enjoy enhanced status as a consequence of polygamy. That is not so anywhere.
The Mormons in the United States have an interesting way of dealing with induced gender imbalances in their polygamous societies. The old guys just kick all the young men out and keep all the nubile young women for themselves. At my age it sounds like a conjugally ideal type of arrangement although I doubt I would have enjoyed it as a rootless young man. And my own daughters doubtless would dislike this way of organising their future marriages. I wonder if these ugly Mormons have any respect for their own daughters!
According to the New York Times:
I suggested this frustration might spill over into aberrant social attitudes, a preference for religious stupidity and even a leakage of young men into the ranks of the terrorists. They might even then delude themselves by believing they can eventually ‘get it off’ with the 72 virgins in heaven if they do their duty on earth by massacring some innocent civilians and non-believers.
The standard argument by Robert Frank is that polygamy advances the interests of women by increasing their scarcity value. I don't buy this in Muslim societies where a female is initially the property of her father which is, on marriage, transferred to her husband. Indeed one might argue that these oppressive institutional arrangements that treat women badly are endogenously determined by the demand for polygamy which would otherwise give them enhanced scarcity value.
Oppression is then a mechanism for reducing what would otherwise be increased bargaining power. Women just lose out big and are treated badly as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (and others) point out.
No-one could possibly say that women in Muslim societies enjoy enhanced status as a consequence of polygamy. That is not so anywhere.
The Mormons in the United States have an interesting way of dealing with induced gender imbalances in their polygamous societies. The old guys just kick all the young men out and keep all the nubile young women for themselves. At my age it sounds like a conjugally ideal type of arrangement although I doubt I would have enjoyed it as a rootless young man. And my own daughters doubtless would dislike this way of organising their future marriages. I wonder if these ugly Mormons have any respect for their own daughters!
According to the New York Times:
It is amazing how grown men can delude themselves and, indeed, how whole societies can come to fool themselves with non-functional religious beliefs.Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled or felt compelled to leave the polygamous settlement that straddles Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.
Disobedience is usually the reason given for expulsion, but former sect members and state legal officials say the exodus of males — the expulsion of girls is rarer — also remedies a huge imbalance in the marriage market. Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are supposed to have at least three wives.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Sexual frustration under Islam
I have asked Muslims I know what happens to all the men who miss out on getting a partner in an Islamic society when polygamy is practised? Assuming levels of homosexuality are constant across cultures and that the gender ratio is approximatetely 1:1, won't there be a lot of sexually frustrated men?
This article from Psychology Today suggests that frustration is inevitable and explains the concentration of terrorism and suicide bombers among Muslim polygamist societies as a consequence. The claim is that nearly all suicide bombers are single.
This is a corollary of the idea due to Robert Frank - discussed earlier on this blog - that polygamy favours females at the expense of males.
'The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.
Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10% taller and 20% heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous. Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group.
The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males. In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one."
Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man.
Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife.
True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
Most suicide bombers are Muslim Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why?
The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50% of men have 2 wives each, then the other 50% don't get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single'.
Of course these arguments are a bit suspect when it comes to the welfare of women. If women are in scarce supply then extremely strict regtulations might be imposed by men to stop them exerting their market power. There are few societies on earth where women have a narrower range of options than Islamic societies.
Also if women must live with the consequences of terrorism - response attacks by those who don't like seeing their citizens blown to pieces by sexually frustrated bigots - then they will be disadvantaged anyway. I can't see women living with their homes being bombed and their sons and husbands being killed enjoying that much advantage irrespective of their monopoly power.
Excerpted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigree in September 2007. Among the other issues analysed are why men prefer blondes and women with blue eyes, why couples with at least one son divorce less frequently, why beautiful people have more daughters, and why male harrassment of women is not sexist.
This article from Psychology Today suggests that frustration is inevitable and explains the concentration of terrorism and suicide bombers among Muslim polygamist societies as a consequence. The claim is that nearly all suicide bombers are single.
This is a corollary of the idea due to Robert Frank - discussed earlier on this blog - that polygamy favours females at the expense of males.
'The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.
Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10% taller and 20% heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous. Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group.
The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males. In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one."
Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man.
Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife.
True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
Most suicide bombers are Muslim Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why?
The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50% of men have 2 wives each, then the other 50% don't get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single'.
Of course these arguments are a bit suspect when it comes to the welfare of women. If women are in scarce supply then extremely strict regtulations might be imposed by men to stop them exerting their market power. There are few societies on earth where women have a narrower range of options than Islamic societies.
Also if women must live with the consequences of terrorism - response attacks by those who don't like seeing their citizens blown to pieces by sexually frustrated bigots - then they will be disadvantaged anyway. I can't see women living with their homes being bombed and their sons and husbands being killed enjoying that much advantage irrespective of their monopoly power.
Excerpted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigree in September 2007. Among the other issues analysed are why men prefer blondes and women with blue eyes, why couples with at least one son divorce less frequently, why beautiful people have more daughters, and why male harrassment of women is not sexist.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Oldie movies by Fritz Lang & some modern movies
I’ve watched a couple of Fritz Lang movie masterpieces over the last days and several modern films. Its been a long, lazy Easter break.
Metropolis is a silent Lang classic from 1926, perhaps the first science fiction epic, with a wild plot involving downtrodden workers, mad engineers and feminoid robots. This astounding film is highly moralistic with a message about the balance between heart and mind in an industrial society that has, I think, contemporary relevance. I couldn’t get the original version of this flick but was left with one having a new (1998) music soundtrack by Peter Osborne. What a surreal and stylistically exaggerated movie this is. With the silent movies the emphasis fell on acting skill and this is one of the greatest of its genre from the viewpoint of displaying precisely that skill – the acting is dramatic, exaggerated and gripping. Rank 10/10 'fantastic' is the accurate adjective.
The Lang movie M (1931) features Peter Lorre in one of his first starring roles as a serial child killer who whistles Grieg. Lorre is put on trial by a criminal gang who are annoyed that the crime crackdown following the murders isa cutting into their ability to act – Lorre pleads that while they choose to commit crime, he is compelled to commit it. This is early film noir. This is a spooky, thriller (in German with subtitles) with good mob scenes and cop-versus-robber adventures. The German city is fearful of the murderer and these fears provide an interesting picture of pre-War Germany with criminal gangs and authoritarian coppers. I originally had problems getting a copy – I normally search for these older movies on EBay – but I bought a splendid DVD of this in a remainder bin outside a Tandy’s store for exactly $2. Grade 7/10.
I watched Marie Antoinette which I enjoyed. It stars the blood-warming Kirsten Dunst - you will fall in love with her after viewing this delightful tale. It is almost a historical movie but poetic licence intrudes more than a little. It is presented in a modern idiom but with historical costumes and exquisite presentations of the extravagant, luxurious lifestyles of Versailles that lead to the collapse of Louis V1. Sad moments of sexual- and life-starved frustration for Marie though she sticks with dense Louis through thick-and-thin. Both are on a gravy train that they do not entirely welcome and from which they cannot get off. The images that stick in my mind are of the sumptuous strawberry deserts, Marie’s shoes and clothes and the general sumpyuous glory of Versailles! Rank 8/10.
I watched The Painted Veil which gets 7/10. Based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, this is a love story set in the 1920s telling the tale of a young English couple, Walter (Edward Norton), a bacteriologist, and Kitty (Naomi Watts), an upper-class woman. They get married for the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai, where Kitty falls in love with a sleazy cad. Walter uncovers the infidelity and, in an act of spite, accepts a job in a remote village in China ravaged by cholera and KMT anger, and takes Kitty with him. Watching her husband working with KMT nationalists and cholera sufferers gives Kitty a new respect for him and they re-engage. It is a 'solidity versus fickleness' story with impressive photography of Chinese countryside.
Finally, I watched and enjoyed The Illusionist – the story of a man from the ‘lower classes’ (Edward Norton again) who secures the love of a woman of far higher social rank and retains this love using his skills as a magician, illusionist and strategist. This is a delightful fairytale that I strongly recommend - a 9/10. The magic is awesome and the intriguing punch line (which I won’t preannounce) is compelling. It’s a pleasant, well-acted fantasy. Norton is excellent as is Jessica Biel, the target of his affections.
Metropolis is a silent Lang classic from 1926, perhaps the first science fiction epic, with a wild plot involving downtrodden workers, mad engineers and feminoid robots. This astounding film is highly moralistic with a message about the balance between heart and mind in an industrial society that has, I think, contemporary relevance. I couldn’t get the original version of this flick but was left with one having a new (1998) music soundtrack by Peter Osborne. What a surreal and stylistically exaggerated movie this is. With the silent movies the emphasis fell on acting skill and this is one of the greatest of its genre from the viewpoint of displaying precisely that skill – the acting is dramatic, exaggerated and gripping. Rank 10/10 'fantastic' is the accurate adjective.
The Lang movie M (1931) features Peter Lorre in one of his first starring roles as a serial child killer who whistles Grieg. Lorre is put on trial by a criminal gang who are annoyed that the crime crackdown following the murders isa cutting into their ability to act – Lorre pleads that while they choose to commit crime, he is compelled to commit it. This is early film noir. This is a spooky, thriller (in German with subtitles) with good mob scenes and cop-versus-robber adventures. The German city is fearful of the murderer and these fears provide an interesting picture of pre-War Germany with criminal gangs and authoritarian coppers. I originally had problems getting a copy – I normally search for these older movies on EBay – but I bought a splendid DVD of this in a remainder bin outside a Tandy’s store for exactly $2. Grade 7/10.
I watched Marie Antoinette which I enjoyed. It stars the blood-warming Kirsten Dunst - you will fall in love with her after viewing this delightful tale. It is almost a historical movie but poetic licence intrudes more than a little. It is presented in a modern idiom but with historical costumes and exquisite presentations of the extravagant, luxurious lifestyles of Versailles that lead to the collapse of Louis V1. Sad moments of sexual- and life-starved frustration for Marie though she sticks with dense Louis through thick-and-thin. Both are on a gravy train that they do not entirely welcome and from which they cannot get off. The images that stick in my mind are of the sumptuous strawberry deserts, Marie’s shoes and clothes and the general sumpyuous glory of Versailles! Rank 8/10.
I watched The Painted Veil which gets 7/10. Based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, this is a love story set in the 1920s telling the tale of a young English couple, Walter (Edward Norton), a bacteriologist, and Kitty (Naomi Watts), an upper-class woman. They get married for the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai, where Kitty falls in love with a sleazy cad. Walter uncovers the infidelity and, in an act of spite, accepts a job in a remote village in China ravaged by cholera and KMT anger, and takes Kitty with him. Watching her husband working with KMT nationalists and cholera sufferers gives Kitty a new respect for him and they re-engage. It is a 'solidity versus fickleness' story with impressive photography of Chinese countryside.
Finally, I watched and enjoyed The Illusionist – the story of a man from the ‘lower classes’ (Edward Norton again) who secures the love of a woman of far higher social rank and retains this love using his skills as a magician, illusionist and strategist. This is a delightful fairytale that I strongly recommend - a 9/10. The magic is awesome and the intriguing punch line (which I won’t preannounce) is compelling. It’s a pleasant, well-acted fantasy. Norton is excellent as is Jessica Biel, the target of his affections.
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