The strangers who have babies together

A fascinating look by the BBC at "platonic parenting".

In 2014, Charly Bourne, a then 43-year-old nurse living with his husband in Philadelphia in the US, started to think seriously about having kids. At first, he considered adoption. But after hearing about ‘platonic parenting’ from a colleague, he decided to set up a profile on Modamily, a website that helps connect people who want to start a family. As traditional notions of family get redefined, people like Charly are choosing to raise children as platonic partners.

See the video here.

Over the last few decades, the constraining straitjackets of gender identity have been progressively loosened.  First came the pill, then came easier divorce, then gay rights, then gay marriage.  Step-by-step the old identities and relationships, which seemed immutable, have shifted and changed.

In my writings, I have bisexual men who love both their women and their men, and at some point, I'm going to have to think how they will parent children, and how it will all work.  But all I know is that things will be different.  Just how, I don't know.  I have talked about this broad topic before, here and here.  And in ElvenSword, DemonThrong and AngelFire, I specifically created a society where these relationships are more complicated and subtler than the heterosexual marriage that the ChrisTaliban insist is the only way.

Sperm competition

Another insight from Sex at Dawn:

"Why do so many heterosexual men get off on pornography featuring groups of guys having sex with just one woman?  Researchers have confirmed what porn producers already know: men tend to get turned on by images depicting an environment in which sperm competition is clearly at play.  Images and videos showing one woman with multiple males are far more popular on the internet and in commercial pornography than those depicting one male with multiple females.  Why would the males in a species that's been wearing the shackles of monogamy for 1.9 million years be sexually excited by scenes of groups of men ejaculating with one or two women?" (Page 229)

The traditional theory of male competition is that men compete, not their sperm.  The winner of the personal struggle gets to impregnate the most females.  This is of course the gorilla model, where the male is twice the size of the female, and is polygynous (has a harem).  But suppose men cooperate, and instead their sperm competes?

They point also to:

1. Men climax much quicker than women
2. Women can have multiple orgasms; men need a bit of a break before they're ready to fuck again
3. The shape of the coronal ridge and the glans is unique to man; this shape is effective in pulling back previously deposited sperm, with extended repeated thrusting
4. Man has the longest and fattest cock of all the great apes
5. A human ejaculation consists of 3 to 9 spurts; the early spurts contain protective chemicals; the later ones a spermicidal substance--logical only if multiple male partners are the biological norm
6. Daily ejaculation dramatically reduces DNA damage to men's sperm cells, thereby increasing male fertility
7. Rapid-reaction DNA controlling development of testicular tissue, this DNA being absent in monogamous or polygynous primates
8. Human (and bonobo) sexual activity goes far beyond what's needed for conception,  with more than 1000 copulations per birth
9. Female Copulatory Vocalisation. i.e., the noise women make during orgasm makes no sense if we are monogamous, never mind the danger such a racket would make in a jungle full of large predators
10. Why do women have orgasms at all?
11. Human hypersexuality.
12. Testicular volume and libido far beyond what's needed for monogmaous or polygynous mating
13. There is evidence that the woman's body chooses which man's sperm to accept by releasing chemicals
14. The precarious location of the testicles in a vulnerable external scrotum, associated with promiscuous mating  

Such an interesting book.  The squeals of outrage which greeted its publication rather suggest it's essentially right.

[See also Sex at Dawn]

Sex at dawn

I'm rereading this, well, seminal book.

This snippet:

Our DNA differs from that of chimps and bonobos by roughly 1.6%, making us closer to them than a dog is to a fox, a white-handed gibbon to a white-cheeked crested gibbon, an Indian elephant to an African elephant or, for any bird-watchers who may be tuning in, a red-eyed vireo to a white-eyed vireo

Yet, when it comes to monogamy, we are routinely compared to gibbons, who conveniently happen to be monogamous.  But they are rather dim compared to us, chimps and bonobos,  and are also much less close relatives, diverging from our evolutionary line over 20 million years ago, compared with 5 million for bonobos and chimps.  Chimps and bonobos are, meanwhile, emphatically not monogamous.

An altogether fascinating book.

See also:

    Our Cheatin' Hearts
    Drives
    Normal Plus
    Friends
    Big Day Coming

Majorca Flats 219

 “Esmé isn't like that.”

“Isn't she? She's fucking in love with Key. For all I know, they're fucking.”

“So? Keith fucks Tom. You knew that, didn't you?”

“Yeah.” Luigi scowled. “But it's different!”

“Why?”

Luigi pulled himself out of Jason's arms and went to stand at the window looking down at the street below. A tram went by, rattling over its tracks, and the driver pinged its bell at a wayward car. “I don't know,” he said at last. “Maybe because … because if you're married you're supposed to be faithful and all that stuff. Maybe because the hets always win. Everybody approves of marriage! Everybody goes all dewy-eyed about a newly married couple. As long as they're a man and a woman. Everybody's assumptions are that this is the real relationship and ours is inferior. Worthless. Meaningless.”

“Keith would never hurt you, Lou.”

“Yes, he would, if Esmé married him and then said marriage is for two and he had to be faithful to her. I knew a bi bloke who got married and his wife knew he was bi and before the marriage said 'no it's fine I won't mind if you have a man occasionally.' As soon as they were married, she said, 'oh, I can't bear it when you're with a man.' So he stopped.”

[Image from World Polyamory Association]


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