The place of the erotic cuckold among the evolved human animal?

[Orson2]

Psychologist David Ley did yeoman’s work by documenting that erotic cuckoldry is seen throughout recorded history (see his book “Insatiable”).
But what about our pre-historic anthropological past?

In a new piece online at UnHerd, Olympia Campbell dares to go there. If men are more promiscuous than women, and women are the
selective sex, where are the limits of overlap? And how much overlap exists? Where either sex contradicts these complimentary
archetypes? Put differently, are Hotwife/Cuckold couples visible in pre-historic life?

Just as one finds among prostitutes in recorded history, we see the promiscuous woman wanting and needing the adult
pair-bonding experience, in general. Just as we see tolerant or “compromising” men—as most cuckold’s here do—she says, we can
see the strong need for promiscuous females to pair-bond in societies with less developed economic status, such as pastoralists.

Here, I excerpt from Campbell:

Consider the following statement: “I don’t like it when her boyfriend is here in the morning when I come back from being away.” This line might seem plucked from a conversation about sexual jealousy in a polyamorous chatroom [or else here at OurHotwives], but in fact it comes from a Himba man, a semi-nomadic pastoralist group from Northwest Namibia.

With an estimated population of 50,000, the Himba still “marry”, in the sense that there are socially recognised unions between two or more individuals. There is also widespread acceptance of infidelity for men and women, leading to the highest rate of extra-marital children ever recorded, with 48% of all children fathered by someone other than the husband. It’s no secret when this happens, and parents tend to know with high accuracy whose child is whose. Moreover, Himba men place great value on being good fathers, even when they suspect the child is not biologically theirs. Jealousy still exists, as the above quote demonstrates, as does violence, and there is a degree of informal concealment around these affairs: to reduce the risk of run-ins, husbands are expected not to come home if they are out after dark, while lovers should leave before they hear the roosters crowing.

The Himba are an extreme example, but stories of relationship fluidity and female promiscuity crop up again and again in the anthropological record. As Paul Riesman has observed, among the Fulani of West Africa, a man knows that a woman has lovers and that “if he is away, whether on a trip… or out looking for women himself, ineluctably his wife will have visitors and that it depends on her wishes alone whether she will go into the bush with them or not”. Meanwhile, many lowland indigenous populations of South America believe in partible paternity, whereby multiple men “contribute” semen to the gestation of a child, leading to most children having several fathers. In the Maqu region of Tibet, trial marriage is practised, where men and women live together before formal marriage, and prior to this cohabitation, may have multiple sexual partners. For the Mosuo and Zhaba farmers of China, husband and wife don’t ever cohabit, instead practising a “walking” marriage in which husbands visit at night, and help raise their sisters’ children during the day. In many traditional hunter-gatherer societies, the environment in which we have spent most of our evolutionary history, there is little stopping lovers from wandering into the forest together.

These examples are not meant to disprove the “naturalness” of long-term monogamous relationships, nor are they “better” ways of being. Many of them are also evidence of the essential existence of “pair bonding” in human relationships, where most individuals do form long-term monogamous relationships. But what they are meant to disprove is a notion of women as inherently chaste and of men as inherently promiscuous. If the elaborate cultural constraints and shame we usually put on women’s sexual behaviour are proof of anything, it is that, without them, women will, and often do, engage in promiscuous behaviour. If the predominance of pair-bonding in humans is proof of anything, it is that men will, and often do, stick around to raise the kids.

— “Let women be promiscuous; Sexual disenchantment can't be blamed on evolution” — BY OLYMPIA CAMPBELL — UnHerd 18Aug23
https://unherd.com/2023/08/let-women-be ... 9#cxrecs_s

I’ll recompose the statement in the last paragraph, thusly: In conclusion,
“Many of these [examples] are also evidence of the essential existence of “pair bonding” in human relationships, where most individuals do form long-term monogamous relationships. But what they are meant to disprove is a notion of women as inherently chaste and of men as inherently promiscuous. If the elaborate cultural constraints and shame we usually put on women’s sexual behaviour are proof of anything, it is that, without them, women will, and often do, engage in promiscuous behaviour. If the predominance of pair-bonding in humans is proof of anything, it is that men will, and often do, stick around to raise the kids.

It is precisely the bolded line that wanna-be Cuck needs to teach his mate. First and last.

[Cdncuck]

I'm not sure it needs to be elevated to such a level of complexity.

[trecital]

I'm not sure it needs to be elevated to such a level of complexity.

Personally, I think you could leave out the word 'elevated'

[Amayzed]

It is interesting, and deepens the sense of eroticism for me, to look beyond our beliefs and conceptions of sexuality and see it as it really is. Of course the process of doing so can leave us with new beliefs and concepts so is tricky doing so.

Thanks for posting this.

[LawyerWouldbeCuckold]

I'm (obviously) a lawyer, and not an evolutionary biologist, but I'm finding the OP's post to be a bit of a stretch; especially the part where he says ".......Psychologist David Ley did yeoman’s work by documenting that erotic cuckoldry is seen throughout recorded history (see his book “Insatiable”)....".

What you often see (not just in the field of human sexual behavior, but in other areas - history, literature, etc) is someone taking either a fixation (like cuckoldry) or an ideological position (say, feminism) or something else- and that using that fixation, or that ideology to either characterize, or to describe a behavior, or a series of actions that may not necessarily have anything to do with that fixation or ideology; but someone is merely trying to say "Hey- this is what ancient (or other) cultures did, so this proves that it's a thing".

I find that highly suspect. Number one, usually no there's way to prove that other cultures thought that it was a "thing", so it's just the author wanting us to believe it was a "thing".

Second, just because other cultures, including the ones described by the OP, procreate and raise children in a different manner than what we used to, does not necessarily mean that they were doing it as part of a "thing".
The OP describe certain tribes or isolated groups of people as practicing communal marriage, but that does mean, it's practiced in order for any of the men to be cuckolds.

Awhile ago, I visited the Arctic. (I'd prefer not to say if it was the American, Russian, or Canadian Arctic). But I learned that one of the traditions of the Inuit (we used to call them Eskimos) is that when a lone hunter came across an Igloo where an Inuit family lived, or a settlement where a number of Inuit lived, that it was customary for that family, or that settlement, to share their food with that lone hunter. It was also common for the wife to be shared as well. That was because Inuit men considered their companions to be "brothers", and shared everything, to include their wives. There was nothing about the man who offered to share his wife wanting to do so in order to gain erotic pleasure; or to be able to call himself a "cuck".

Just sayin........

[Luv2watchher]

I tend to agree with our correspondent from the Law Society. In the UK during the tough years for the economy during the years between the wars, journeyman tradesmen travelled far and wide to do so.

Many working-class households gained a little income by providing bed-and-breakfast accommodation to these tradesmen, and the host's (usually middle-aged) wife was often part of the deal. This again was a "brotherhood" situation which lacked any real erotic dimension. It was a case of the working-class sticking together to make it through hard times.

[LawyerWouldbeCuckold]

I tend to agree with our correspondent from the Law Society. In the UK during the tough years for the economy during the years between the wars, journeyman tradesmen travelled far and wide to do so.

Many working-class households gained a little income by providing bed-and-breakfast accommodation to these tradesmen, and the host's (usually middle-aged) wife was often part of the deal. This again was a "brotherhood" situation which lacked any real erotic dimension. It was a case of the working-class sticking together to make it through hard times.

REALLY? I had no idea that had happened. (I'm a history freak- and I especially like reading about what I call "social history"- and I find that to be fascinating.) But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

[canadianwittol]

I agree that this isn't so much a discussion of "evolution" and of the species itself as it is one of culture.

Culture borne of the Abrahamic religions condemn adultery and because it was thought in years past that a woman was the property of her husband, the blame and social stigma was placed on him - and so these patriarchal cultures developed stories, mythologies and cultural practices to shame the cuckold - this being a warning to young men to keep their women in line lest they befall the social humiliations ascribed to cuckolds.

Like any other taboo however: this becomes eroticized, and in different ways: Some men want to deliberately go out and make cuckolds of other men, enjoying the "forbidden fruit" of their wives, while other men revel in the shame of being a cuckold.

However in other cultures, as already mentioned, Eskimos are one (I am from Canada and I know this all too well) as well as in other cultures around the world including in Africa and Asia, there would be no shame in this at all and as a result, I would suggest, because there is no shame there is therefore nothing to eroticize.

In short, I think it's got a lot more to do with culture than with evolution.

[LawyerWouldbeCuckold]

I agree that this isn't so much a discussion of "evolution" and of the species itself as it is one of culture.

Culture borne of the Abrahamic religions condemn adultery and because it was thought in years past that a woman was the property of her husband, the blame and social stigma was placed on him - and so these patriarchal cultures developed stories, mythologies and cultural practices to shame the cuckold - this being a warning to young men to keep their women in line lest they befall the social humiliations ascribed to cuckolds.

Like any other taboo however: this becomes eroticized, and in different ways: Some men want to deliberately go out and make cuckolds of other men, enjoying the "forbidden fruit" of their wives, while other men revel in the shame of being a cuckold.

However in other cultures, as already mentioned, Eskimos are one (I am from Canada and I know this all too well) as well as in other cultures around the world including in Africa and Asia, there would be no shame in this at all and as a result, I would suggest, because there is no shame there is therefore nothing to eroticize.

In short, I think it's got a lot more to do with culture than with evolution.

Wittol,

If you don't mind me asking, where in Canada do you live? (Feel free to PM me if you would prefer to maintain your privacy in that regard, if you are in fact inclined to answer- entirely up to you) Canada is one of my favorite places to vacation.....if I wasn't tied to the US for a number of reasons, it would def where I would (eventually) retire to.

One of my best friends calls me a "closet Canadian"......LMAO!!!

But more to the point of the discussion.....yes, I think cuckoldry is much more cultural than it is evolutionary. I think some people want to make it seem evolutionary as a way of taking their kink, or their "thing", and saying - "Hey, this is no big deal- we are just wired to do this b/c of our ancestors"- thus normalizing their "thing".