The Invisible Counterpoint

Psychologist Christopher Ryan is out to defeat an archetypal figure in the mythology of monogamy. No, not prince charming; he's after the widespread belief in a prehistoric hunter who would slay an antelope on the plains and heroically haul it back to his nuclear family. You might wonder what this has to do with monogamy. Well, Ryan argues that in actuality the meat would have been shared with the entire tribe, because pre-agricultural societies shared everything -- including sex. This is a key point he and co-author/wife Cacilda Jethá make in "Sex at Dawn," which was released last year in hardcover and this month in paperback. Our hunting and gathering ancestors were nonmonogamous, they argue -- the implication being that, biologically speaking, sexual exclusivity is unnatural. The book challenges much of the previously accepted wisdom about the sex lives of our ancestors, although the authors admit they haven't exactly proved their case. Regardless, th...

Yet despite the often crushing realities of the world, people still want to believe. Isn't that why, amazingly, people are still watching "The Bachelor"? Isn't that why we New Yorkers were so jubilant this week, when gay and lesbian couples were able for the first time to exchange vows? Isn't that why campaigns selling "true love" get made? Because as much as everybody loves a happy ending, there's something almost unfairly seductive about the notion of a happy beginning -- and the expensive fantasy that a whole lovely lifetime could be lurking within one tiny blue box. (Mary Elizabeth Williams, “She’s the one”: the “She’s the one” director would like to sell you a ring,” Salon, 29 July 2011) @_bigguns There are no good arguments against gay marriage. They are all bullshit. You can't argue that you're right because "marriage is between a man and a woman". There is no "marriage". There's no Magic Spa...