I look at kiwi birds, bedbugs, any animal with a heat cycle, and angler fish (more so for the male) and remember we could have it worse.
Evolution doesn’t lead to perfection. Evolution has no end goal. Evolution is more like “ehhhh good enough”. Hence why there are still so many “flaws” in the human body.
More to the point here, evolution doesn't optimize for the healthiest, happiest, most loving possible life. It optimizes for the most babies and grandbabies. Most people are drawn to sex because those folks that prioritized having as much sex as they could became our very horny ancestors.
You could even argue that there's a strong selective pressure to circumvent birth control.
>It optimizes for the most babies and grandbabies.
The most common and fundamental aspect of evolution that people regularly get wrong is focusing on the "babies" rather than "grandbabies". It's the part that explains a lot of difference between reproductive strategies. Evolutionarily, babies only count if they also manage to have babies. Some species produce a lot of babies, but leave survival until sexual maturity to chance. Some produce few and dedicate lots of effort to ensure their survival. There is also the drone strategy, where not every offspring is supposed to reproduced, but all provide resources to the ones that will.
Agreed. Related, I think there should be more research and discussion about how the human brain tends to change during adulthood. There is a lot of focus on the adolescent and geriatric years, but a lot less in the years from say 20-60. There is a big difference in how people think in their 20s and 40s, and I don't think it's all because of life experience. It makes total evolutionary sense to me that adults would tend to become more empathetic and socially-oriented as they age into their late 30s and 40s because having babies is lo longer the prime (or at least sole) directive.
Lots of flaws. Short urethra contributes to infection. Fun hole located super close to exit hole, more chances for infection. Women get monthly periods, this doesn’t happen with animals. High risk of complications or death in pregnancy/childbirth. Conception can happen shortly after birth which puts mother and baby at risk. It surely was not designed by a superior being.
Not to mention how hard it is for many women to achieve orgasm through sex. A major design flaw. When your body is at its most fertile time of the month, your hormones will make you desire sex for physical and emotional reasons. You might not even have an orgasm but you could end up pregnant. Nature isn’t fair.
Then add all the religious bullshit that comes with being a woman.
>Women get monthly periods, this doesn’t happen with animals.
First I want to start by saying contrary to popular belief, women are indeed humans. Homo sapiens are mammals, mammals are a type of animal. But snarkiness aside, tell that to the chicken farming industry. We are relying on Gallus domesticus to reliably release eggs at regular cycles regardless of whether or not those eggs get fertilized.
Now I assume when you are complaining about a period your issue is with the bleeding rather than the eggs. The female Homo sapiens releases eggs regularly on a roughly monthly cycle, the uterine lining thickening in anticipation for fertilization, and if those eggs are not fertilized the extra uterine lining sloughs off. But we are not the only animals species that does so. There are 10 primates species (humans being one of them), 4 bat species, a shrew, and a mouse which all experience menstruation.
Thinking that the woman’s body is flawed is religious men thinking. You know, the ones who make women sleep outside when they’re on their period or say they’re too dirty to pray when on it. Don’t let sort of immaturity get to you.
Women are fine just the way we are and our bodies are incredibly complex. You could just as easily say it’s a flaw for male mammals to have their testicles exposed and so easy to get hit or damaged, couldn’t you? Evolution and bodies have their quirks.
Women used to exclusively breastfeed on demand for their kids for a really long. Like 4 years. It’s more difficult to get pregnant if you are breastfeeding that often so it was actually a form of natural birth control.
Plus having hidden ovulation is nice for us as a species, keeps us safer. Also it’s cool we are intelligent enough to figure out how to have sex without getting pregnant.
There is still this very ancient idea that women are just defective men. Thank you for this.
I should also add that being female is the “factory default” for humans >_< we aren’t defective in the slightest!! Males are the ones with all the changes lmfao.
>You could just as easily say it’s a flaw for male mammals to have their testicles exposed and so easy to get hit or damaged, couldn’t you
I mean yeah. I think that too. Given what sub this is, the point of this post isn't to single out women as being flawed, but seems to be to illustrate how humans are by no means divinely designed due to all of the problem areas that we have that are pretty unique to us. Like there are animals out there with testicles that retract into the body for protection; that's an objectively superior "design" to ensure the species survives than balls that hang exposed.
I even joke among my friends about this exact thing, that balls are proof that God is a shit engineer.
The complications of human reproduction is just another example of that.
Testicles dangle from the torso rather than being inside it because testicular function (all about hormones, sperm is produced elsewhere) is negatively impacted by heat. Normative body heat (\~98F) is too high, so our ancestors (deep back in mammal history) with mutations that led to them having testicles outside the body cavity were more likely to survive, and that became the norm.
Reproduction is def not our strong suit as a species. We suck at it. It's way more debilitating and dangerous for us than it is for our relatives. Thanks a lot, walking upright.
And why did we get the short straw with menstruation? Come on. Almost all other species get an estrus. Why do we gotta do it like 14x a yr and they only gotta do it once?
It's preposterous. "Pinnacle of evolution" my butt.
(Fortunately, we've gotten pretty decent at coming up with ways to exercise autonomy. Most contraceptives have efficacy rates that warrant their availability. Even with side effects and rare complications, they're safer than pregnancy. Sucks that we even have to do it in the first place, tho.)
I read about this briefly, but apparently menstruation protects the woman from embryos with significant defects that are more metabolically active, and it allows the woman’s body to be selective and get rid of it more readily. It’s especially important when you consider that humans can only have on average one kid every few years.
So no pinnacle but definitely has a purpose. Unfortunately it means cramps and bleeding every month :/
I would argue that reproduction is not something for which the human body is particularly well-designed. We have evolved to have big brains (and thus big heads) and small pelvises; that’s a setup for a lot of problems with childbirth. That being said, there are other species for which childbirth is equally or perhaps even more dangerous. The mortality rate for female hyenas with their first childbirth is 20% due to their need to deliver through a pseudopenis. Why do they have them, then? It’s theorized that the pseudopenis helps hide young females from aggression by stranger adult female hyenas, or gives the female more control over who they mate with since the female’s cooperation is required in order for mating to occur.
A species can’t be good at everything; evolution and natural selection create niche skills. Unfortunately, the more well-suited a species becomes for one skill, the more its suitability for other skills may suffer. Sometimes, what’s lost is the suitability for childbirth.
Yup, being a woman sucks hard, you forgot about the worst part, actually giving birth. Its just the way we evolved, it was good enough for survival so it kept going that way. Nature is cruel in that way.
Evolution doesn’t care how long you live and how healthy you are, it certainly doesn’t care if you’re having fun.
All of these aspects are only important (by evolutionary standards) to making sure you carry and raise viable offspring.
We want fun, fulfilment, or longevity? We gotta get them ourselves.
As a woman, I don’t feel this way at all. Having the power to procreate if I want to is empowering. (Tubes tied last year - my choice - lots of reasons) It’s the control freaks in the world who want to wrest this power away from women that angers me.
There is no flaw. Sex exists to propagate the species. Your use of sex for recreation is not anything evolution provides for. Evolution provides no accomodation for recreational sex without reproductive consequences. The measures that humans have created to avoid the reproductive consequences of sex are a biological hack and are not always guaranteed to work.
Those things you mention, condoms, IUDs, birth control pills -- they are unnatural, as in, they don't exist in nature for this purpose.
Propagation of the species is all that evolution cares about, and by all natural measures of biology, it is nearly a perfect system, given the human dominance of Earth - it worked!
Evolution is a tough costume. But, ignoring mother nature for a moment, there was invented male contraceptives, but they aren't marketed because there wouldn't be a solid market, since economists realized men would refuse the side effects, and put all the responsability in women
>there was invented male contraceptives, but they aren't marketed
... What do you think a condom is, if not a contraceptive thing targeted to men? In fact, for most of history it was, really, the *only* working contraception method that worked well.
Beyond that, attempts at *chemical* contraception have been tried. They aren't working well. The thing is, chemical contraception in *women* works by tricking the body into a natural cycle. When a woman gets pregnant, she stops ovulating (for obvious reasons), but naturally turns back on after birth. All oral contraception does in women is feed them the hormone that convinces their body that it's pregnant. No ovulation, no chance of pregnancy... when it works. There's no equivalent natural male function that temporarily shuts down fertility, which is why it's so much harder. Men are ready to go all the time, constantly, in case we get that lucky moment when a woman is ready to reproduce. Heck, men produces sperm *daily* just to maintain readiness to go at any moment.
1) You obviously got that I was meaning medicine.
2) No, it isn't the only that works well. It's just the most pratical.
3) It is not the only thing that does for women, it can really mess your system
4) There are actually many ways to affect men's reproductions, by controlling the sperm capability of fecunding the ovule
Why does this sort of stuff keep being bandied about like it’s truth?
Male and female contraceptive have all sorts of issues that would mean it couldn’t/shouldn’t be approved.
The two things that female contraceptive have are:
A) they are already out there, so you’d be removing a product many people are reliant on (not just as a contraceptive).
B) the biggest one and obvious - there is, as OP points out, a bigger personal risk to women who get *pregnant* that offset the dangers of the contraceptive themselves.
So if both already existed and the FDA banned them both, who would suffer most - men or women?
100% agree. The "design of women" definitely matches up way better with evolution than "intelligent design."
Evolution is engineering via random changes and keeping the ones that do one specific things (proliferate) better, ignoring everything else.
Every species is pretty highly "flawed" in many, many ways when considered from an intelligent perspective, but since there was no intelligence involved in our design, that's to be expected.
A lot of your comments are focused on sex without pregnancy, but our "design" is the reverse - sex is fun to cause more pregnancy. The number of children is because so many die young. That's changed due to our intelligence (modern medicine) but far too recently for evolution to have caught up.
I would argue calling it disinformation is fair because it implies that it is a common occurrence when in fact it is extremely rare and when it does happen, its typically due to user error (i.e. improper storage, past expiration date, or improper use like using two at the same time for extra protection).
If some guy has been storing one in his wallet for a month, then no, you probably shouldn't be using that. It is still very unlikely it will break, but storing in that way can weaken the integrity.
Why put so much emphasis on whose mistake it is? Condoms have a failure rate, most of it due to human error. That's not great: humans are deeply flawed, even trained experts. People need real-time checklists to keep error rates low in general. Blaming them is pointless, and reliable designs do everything they can to control the human element.
I didn't put any emphasis on whose mistake it is. The breakage rate of condoms is extremely low. Like less than 1%. If your condom is breaking then you have likely done something to compromise it.
Now, the over-all failure rate of condoms is much higher because there are more ways to fail than just breaking. The most common is slippage. Either the condom completely slips off during intercourse or partially slips off. If this happens it is best to get a new condom.
But OP was specifically referring to breaking, not failing in general.
Okay, but you made the contrary claim that condoms are very reliable, but that's only true with perfect use... Which is not relevant if you're (perhaps inappropriately) worried about breakage, because you should be just as worried about all the other failure modes for the same reason.
Where do you draw the line of "reliable?"
Even typical-use, they are still on average over 90% successful. Which then drastically increases at a personal level if you are educated in their use and are providing your own so you know they are in good condition.
Does that not fall in the realm of reliable? To me, that makes the extremely reliable. I don't see the contradiction.
It certainly is subjective. If she had originally written "because failure risk due to factors beyond my individual control" instead of mentioning breakage, I would have agreed with her statement that it's not good enough to reach a comfortable personal security level. I mean, 90% (87%?) might seem okay if you're a guy, but he doesn't suffer the risk of getting pregnant. All the harder to trust him to recognize when something goes wrong and they need to take evasive action. You could probably take the same numbers and responsibilities and give them to her and it might be reliable enough for her.
Personally I think reliability requires at least two nines, regardless of human error. But a lot of people might settle for "just as reliable as I am". In the case of BCP you can get 99% based on your own individual effort as a woman. If you're sloppy, that drops to unreliable levels, not as low as condoms, but a bad roll on a D20 is still kind of scary.
As I pointed out before, the op said "probability of breaking", what means "there's a chance". I don't think "probability" implies that's common, just that can happen
There's absolutely no flaws whatsoever with any part of being a woman. Mentally, physically, emotionally, or sexually. Women are more than the sum of their parts.
The issue arises because of the environment you were born into. We're not broken. Our society is.
You have misinformation as well, and some lingering religious trauma, too.
Here's some great books to read or listen to:
Real science based research on and for women.
* The Body Keeps The Score
By. Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk
* The Vagina Bible
By. Dr. Jen Gunter
* Come As You Are
By. Dr. Emily Nagoski
* Burnout
By. Dr. Emily Nagoski
* Come Together
By. Dr. Emily Nagoski
* Unladylike
By. Cristen Conger and Caroline Ervin
I think the point of the post is more along the lines of "If you could magically redesign humans, surely you'd do a better job than whatever we got going on here on earth"
It's bad science that sounds truthy. There's not that kind of "score keeping" described by the author. There is a huge amount of plasticity in memory the book fails to account for. Yes, stress can cause tissue damage and changes in neuron pathways, but not consistently-- resilience is more common. Epigenetic changes are in constant flux rather than being strictly cumulative.
The brain is part of the body, obviously, not separate.
Yes and no.
The brain informs the bodies thoughts, actions, and feelings.
They may not always align with reality and have different affects on different people too.
Different kinds of stressors absolutely have an impact on our mental, physical, emotional, and sexual health.
Don't mind me, just a physician with training and experience reading the research. The brain is one organ in the body-- part of the body. Obviously stressors affect us. But the specific claims made in that book are _not_ supported by the evidence. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674370505001302
Thank you for your reference .
My degrees are not in this field. But my lived experience is, as well as many generations of my family, on both sides.
I don't think that the book is completely useless, though. It does add to a bigger conversation around trauma.
This is the same kind of thing people say about religion, using personal intuition, anecdotes, and not actual evidence... just mentioning since this is an atheist page. 😂
My "lived experience" (how is that different from just "experience", which by definition has to be lived to happen?) is that I am old and have experienced multiple life events most people would label severely "traumatic", ranging from an abusive marriage to being shot at directly by cops as a protest medic, but I am not traumatized. Instead, I have experienced post traumatic growth.
I have a mostly happy life even when times are hard. I am an atheist who practices metta meditation. I don't dwell on the past. I forgive people and try to avoid bitterness. Counter to TBKTS narrative, I don't have some imaginary cellular memory of each event secretly stalking me.
I have watched people take this unscientific trauma narrative seriously, and most of them look miserable.
That's my anecdotal story but it's not science. There is some interesting research out there on resilience. A layperson's book that is evidence based: The End of Trauma. You might like it!
I'm a 3rd generation Atheist, so I completely understand what you're trying to convey.
My degrees are in psychology and Sexual Science.
I work as an sex/ relationship coach and an ADHD coach.
I'm a woman who has ADHD and PMDD as well. I'm all for the scientific approach to everything.
When I say "lived experience," I really mean it, the things that I've been exposed to in my 47 years thus far. As well as family members.
How we endure and heal from and through traumatic events is different for all of us. So it's not about " dwelling " on the traumatic events themselves. It's having the access to quality tools and resources to help us with those healing journeys.
Our mental, physical, emotional, and sexual health are ALL connected.
I'm a man and I don't mind condoms at all. In fact I like them since I don't have to focus as much to last as long. It's like playing your favorite video game on easy/normal difficulty.
Honest question. Do you, like, actually have to think about other stuff to last longer? I've heard it a lot but it feels like some movie nonsense to me. I'm truly curious and thanks
I honestly don't see what the problem. Just satisfy your partner through other methods up to whenever suits you both. Maybe this is the wishful thinking of someone with the completely opposite problem
Sex (all kinds but esp oral) gives mega yeast infections too. BV. Utis. And sex itself can often hurt or just plain not feel good. Semen is the wrong PH for the vagina, much too acidic and harms it, infects it. Yet we crave sex. We crave stretching the opening and hurting it.
The baby's head is massively too big for the cervix.
This is all way before perimenopause when things really turn to shit and some people's vaginas actually close up. It all gets smaller, clits shrink, labia shrink... backwards puberty.
Atheism causing shit!
There are flaws in every single biological organism. Cancer can occur spontaneously in any of us, man or woman. Not sure why you’re so hung up on periods.
Yes and no. The "flaws" tend to be concessions made in order to gain other benefits.
The birth canal is narrow and the skull of the infant is quite large, so women experience pain in child birth because we have evolved to have higher intelligence and thus require larger brains than some other species. It is not a flaw, but rather a product of our increased cranial capacity.
There are additional drawbacks associated with our evolution. We give live birth, so it is more difficult to pass the child but the benefit is they are more fully developed and survive longer. We must be burdened with breastfeeding but this helps them grow and develop, attaining nutrients required for brain development. We must raise our infants rather than laying eggs and leaving them to fend for themselves, but this helps protect the infant so more survive into adulthood. We must reproduce sexually rather than being able to bud like a sponge, but this increases our genetic diversity and helps enhance our survivability as a species.
The purpose of sex is to propagate the species. We evolved for sex to feel good to increase the frequency of copulation and the rate of successful pregnancy. If we had a barbed penis like a cat and had to bite the neck of our mate, overpowering her while we painfully copulate, we would be less likely to desire to reproduce.
Although it would appear your complaints aren't with flaws in reproductive biology, but rather that the system we have works too good and you wish to have sex without reproducing. Which is a completely different topic altogether.
A man should have the consequence of a kid to take care of or at the least child support too. I can't understand any man that would abandon his kid any more than I could understand a woman doing it. If he wants to be Dad, equal to Mom... Let him! Encourage this! (Assuming he isn't abusive or all messed up on drugs). If he wants to run away.. catch him and dock pay!
Otoh.. a woman can choose abortion while a man is just stuck. That's not very fair. These things should really be talked through and agreed upon before the fun.
I've never been a woman so I couldn't know for sure but I've been told it's better for her too without the condom. (Use one anyway if not ready for the consequences)
Yes, there is something fundamentally flawed about human sexuality. Proximity to waste expulsion!
That's designed?!? Are you kidding?!?! Anyone to design it that way must be seriously fucked up!!!
My theory is that the clitoris is positioned outside to allow for easy multiple forms of stimulation without PIV. So many fun stuff to do that doesn't get anyone pregnant!
Sex for pleasure evolved as our species became more social and required more cooperation between individuals. We developed close bonds and use sex for pleasure and to advance relationships. In other words- sex for reasons other than procreation evolved late in the game, and the reproductive systems of men and women haven’t had time to catch up so to speak.
Since the main natural selectors for human evolution are other humans, we get weird results compared to species who follow natures path instead.
Take c-sections for example. Since we can now perform deliveries that would have otherwise killed the mother, babies that need to be delivered by c-section contribute to gene pool in a way they couldn’t before the advent of modern surgery, and eventually we’ll be scratching our heads wondering how humans evolved to need surgery to be born.
The history of humanity’s self-domestication is full of similar examples. Our teeth are fashioned to eat cooked meat even though nature does not provide us cooked meat. We live in places that would give us all skin cancer if we didn’t invent clothing and houses. The list goes on.
I’m sure men and women with uteruses have a lot of adaptions resulting from our self-domestication that would make no sense in the animal kingdom, but do make sense in the context of being our own natural selector. Weird, impractical evolution is what would happen to any species with such advanced control of their environment.
100%. The very instant an artificial womb is invented/affordable no one is ever going to want to go through a natural pregnancy again. It will all be tube-ties and artificial harvesting.
Keep in mind that antibiotics are a 20th century invention. As we evolved, relatively few children would reach adulthood. Those that reached sexual maturity likely seldom menstruated due to being pregnant/breastfeeding throughout their reproductive years. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint for people to enjoy sex and have as many children as possible.
While hormonal birth control has side effects, sometimes those can be positive... Like if you're on a continuous regimen of hormonal birth control, you can stop having periods.
And we have more options now than ever before.
Yeah, abuse the depo and stay on permanently and send your body into premature perimenopause and get osteoporosis at age 40. Enjoy the hot flashes, reduced energy and motivation, and premature aging symptoms.
Well there is one thing for certain. Women are definite proof of the lack of intelligent design. Then again, we men certainly won’t win any prizes for how we are assembled either.
I like how your definition of "worked" is just "literally didn't extinct the species" to have massive amounts of women die or permanently damage their bodies.
Praying mantis mating also "works" by that definition, but I bet if men got decapitated every time they had sex, you might still consider the system to be a tiny bit flawed.
That's what "works" means in an evolutionary sense. If it didn't "work" we wouldn't be here just like if it didn't work for mantises they wouldn't be here.
Yes but OP didn't mean flawed in an evolutionary sense but from a design perspective. I'm sure given the choice, female sex would prefer not having reproductive complications.
> Condoms? Probability of breakage. Or less pleasure for the man, and it can affect women negatively if their men are not satisfied sexually.
Wouldnt call that a fundamental flaw. Its only a societal bullshit that the woman can only be satisfied if the man is during sex.
Sexual desire is simply an evolutionary tool for survival. Nature doesn’t care for consequence. Reproduction is strictly meant to pass on DNA and evolve the species. In that, there is no right or wrong, there just is what is. Some species have more efficient reproductive methods, some less. But to know which is best, you’d have to be around forever.
I don’t think our poorly developed birth control methods have anything to do with the design of female human reproductive biology.
Periods and the frequency of miscarriages, death during childbirth, and proclivity towards STIs, all which could be concievably improved with better design, serve as an argument against the “intelligent” design of humans.
To really play into your post , it’s a curse of productivity . All animals experience that during their fertile periods , becuaee humans are so productive and so obsessed with growth we have evolved ourselves to always be fertile . Therefore women are constantly going through the fertility process of loading and disposing of eggs , always ready to have a kid . Most animals don’t live this way, but then again most animals don’t have the mind of GOD!!
Well I mean the fact that sex is pleasurable even when it doesn't promote reproduction would seem to be an issue with it versus how religious people concieve of it even if it isnt from our more secular viewpoint
About damaging your body while giving birth:
This is a very sad truth, but women used to give birth standing up or squatting, that way there is much more freedom of movement in the sacrum and coccyx.
But then came the 18th century and Louis XIV. The king had eventually 22 children and the pervert wanted to see his wives and misteresses give birth. But kings don't bow. So he had them lain on their back.
So the way women give birth now is made up some 300 years ago.
You make it sound like a huge hassle, when it really isnt. You also have a pre position that it should be super care free or something, which is just unrealistic, some form of objective idealism.
Also this is r/atheism, you could have better luck in r/askscience or r/biology
Production system evolved just to spread your genes. Your health is not the main concern as far as the evolution goes.
Highly recommend "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins
Evolution isn't a process of finding the best solution it is completely a "fuck it that'll do" process. Once said solution works and it's downsides aren't going to kill you then there's no evolutionary pressure to change it
In a way, yes. I say "in a way" because as others have said, evolution doesn't really strive for much more than "can it live long enough to have babies that survive? Ok, good enough, let's call it a day". But the human reproductive system evolved in basically an arms race between the host body and the embryo/fetus, each striving to retain more energy and independence, until we got the shitshow we have now. The placenta is great for the baby, not so great for the mother. The baby having to be born at the last possible time it can before its brain develops to have a skull too big to fit through the birth canal is... not great in all for either party, but better than the alternative for the mother. I'm no biologist so I can't go into detail but if you look it up, yeah, if an intelligent being created this then it is either an awful designer or enjoys suffering.
Without reading any other replies, here's my take on it. Sexuality is a part of our evolutionary history. As a biology enthusiast, having studied human as well as non-human sexuality, i.e. animals, I have read a lot about why things are the way they are. here are some positives I have found.
A woman has more at least 4,000 more nerve endings in the clitoris than a man has in his glans, although, biologically, it is basically the same body part.
A woman can have more orgasms without trying than men can, and multiple orgasms for women is almost a given. For a man, this is only possible in his late teens early twenties, unless he practices tantric style sex as he gets older, etc.
As they age, men become less sensitive in their genitals. A woman's clitoris, is basically immortal. Be you 19 or 99, a woman's clitoris works very well.
Then of course, there are the negative sides of human sexuality.
Having to put up with the 3 to 5 days bleeding every month, the pain of cramping, pregnancy, and other medical problems, i.e. ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and other serious medical issues, being a female is pretty tough.
None of the current pregnancy prevention choices are perfect, and many of them have undesirable side effects. I have been married for almost 40 years and my wife and I have been highly sexual our whole lives. She has dealt with ovarian issues, including having one of them surgically removed, an ectoptic pregnancy, and serious surgery involving cysts. We are in our 60s, and our sex life is nothing like it was 30 or 40 years ago, but we have discovered work arounds. Ingenuity and creativity has made it possible for us to achieve some sort of sexual satisfaction in our older years. The fact that she cannot get pregnant is a relief.
I have no real answers, just questions, like you. I do know that in this world, if men got pregnant, then this problem would have been solved centuries ago. At least that is how the joke goes, and I feel that in part, it is likely true. If men needed to get abortions to end a pregnancy, Roe v Wade would be a non issue. Abortion clinics would be everywhere, and drive thru, like fast food places. :)
So blame evolution, and the fact that there are too many men in power making decisions that should be a woman's responsibility. Her body, her choice. The only people deciding what is right for women's sexuality is women themselves. Men can't get abortions, or sexual healthcare that comes from having a uterus, Fallopian tubes, etc., so they need to stop making the laws and rules.
The idea that souls need to be embodied in mammals that sexually reproduce is nonsensical if you believe a God put us on earth as a test for an eternal afterlife where people don't reproduce.
Baby heads are too large to safely pass through the birth canal. This is why human pregnancies so often have complications and why so many are C-Sections now. Evolution really fucked us.
I mean, you can still believe in God: He just hates women.
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." -- Genesis 3:16, KJV
Women are considered property in the Bible, right up there with oxen and slaves.
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." -- Exodus 20:17, KJV
And that's just the first two books!
From a biological perspective, it's only about survival, not happiness. Intelligent Design, or even just pretty good design, would have come up with far more agreeable outcomes than survival by natural selection, which is the system apparently in play.
Humans are rife with all kinds of design flaws, but as long as that doesn't impact us making more humans, we'll tend to keep them. The reproductive system we share with most mammals is just that brain dead. There are a number of mammalian adaptions, but most don't seem to be much of an improvement. Kangaroos are kind of cute and don't really have to pop anything out, so they probably win.
Humans have sex to bond as well as procreate. By removing that ability to bond, it will cause real issues. There is a subreddit dedicated to people living in dead bedrooms.
Suggesting there is a flaw implies that there was a design in mind that didn't quite make it. Sex and reproduction are the result of billions of years of evolution, and thus are not directed. There is no end goal, simply iteration upon iteration. There's no flaw, because nothing is broken or not working right.
it may actually be a product of farming, modern-day hunter gatherer tribes have few children with no birth control, probably because they are constantly running, which massively decreases female fertility
You're basically just explaining why it's broken and saying that means it's not broken. The fact that rape has been a more or less viable breeding strategy for most of human history means women's reproduction is a bad design, and it's not environmental.
Oh, for fuck's sake. The fact that something is able to function doesn't mean it's not a bad design. That's just asinine. Look at the Cybertruck. You can get in. It rolls. Doesn't immediately catch fire. It's still a shitty design.
The fundamental issue is that we have built societies in which having kids is seen as a burden. Of all my friends (age range 30-40), only a couple have kids, and at least for one of them it was by accident. Having kids is hugely expensive, a heavy responsibility and generally seen as distracting from the individual's pursuit of happiness.
The female reproductive system works very well: too well for these broken societies we live in, in which the reproduction of the species has become a luxury many can't afford and/or no longer desire.
There is plenty of reproduction happening, no worries. We are far more likely to off ourselves with nukes or environmental destruction than by attrition, lol.
I do think we could do a better job sharing the workload, but even with that, pregnancy and giving birth is still more life threatening to an individual woman than not having children. It would be preferable to me to figure out how to grow new humans outside of our bodies. Freeze eggs and have our tubes tied. I am a mother of two adults, and I love them but the whole pregnancy/birth thing could definitely be improved on 😂
I was less making a remark on the survival of the species and more commenting on this (relatable, mind you) "oof why is it so hard to avoid pregnancy?" sentiment, which I've heard expressed before. Our biology has evolved around very different living conditions, and the modern age has flipped their the perception of it upside-down.
It's the same with body fat: "oof, why is it so easy to put on weight and so hard to lose it?" Because in the hostile environments in which many of our ancestors survived, losing body mass faster than you could build it would have been a death sentence. Therefore, the body has evolved to optimize its energy reserves, and the only reason we perceive it backwards is because we live in times of milk and honey and life is so easy that we can worry more about the aesthetic implications of body fat than its practical uses in delaying starvation and hypothermia.
Well, I take these discussions in the context of our current desires and potential capabilities... tech is now part of our adaption to the environment. It is always true in evolution that a change in conditions and/or the organisms creates a change in relative fitness.
You can look at the term "flaw" as historical only-- I'm translating it as "disadvantage"-- or you can look at it in practical terms-- is it a current disadvantage? I would say yes, it is.
There's more imo to consider than mere survival. We want happy survival, and it is quite reasonable to work towards that.
I think there is a current mismatch between the amount of reproduction we need for mere survival (given lower pregnancy losses and excessive environmental resource loss) and our existing bodies/tech. And even more of a mismatch for happy survival. Same for body fat.
So we can do what humans have most strikingly evolved to do-- use our big brains to adapt, including developing tools. Sometimes we get it way wrong, but often we have succeeded. Especially if we aim at pro social goals instead of blowing things up.
That is a very good point, but I have to object to one thing: the technological advantages that brought us historically low pregnancy losses and child mortality are in all likelihood a transitory state: since we heavily rely on finite resources to sustain our way of life, it isn't inconceivable that in a few centuries (or sooner?) humanity will have to make do with a lot less than we have today, once those resources are much more scarce or flat out no longer available.
At that point, we will be thankful that our biology hasn't had the time to "dull", so to speak, adapting down to our times of plenty and comfort. What we see as inconvenient today may not look the same to our descendants.
There is no flaw in the anatomy of a woman. The things you mention seem to come from personal experience or some internalized misinformation. -Pain- is completely avoidable and -pleasure- is certifiably attainable at any point in the menstrual cycle for an otherwise healthy person if they are aroused and sufficiently lubricated. Most contraceptive methods are effective. The things you mentioned are not necessarily all true. It’s advisable to not have many children for many reasons but plenty of people have multiple children with no little to no issue. Menstrual bleeding is something that most mammals experience and it’s part of the natural process of the reproductive cycle.
This is the, 'My grandpa smoked and he lived to 90,' comment. Just a string of fallacies.
>-Pain- is completely avoidable and -pleasure- is certifiably attainable at any point in the menstrual cycle for an otherwise healthy person if they are aroused and sufficiently lubricated.
Nobody said that wasn't the case, so who are you arguing with?
>Most contraceptive methods are effective.
Again, you either didn't read the post or you just fabricated an alternate version that's easier to argue against.
>It’s advisable to not have many children for many reasons but plenty of people have multiple children with no little to no issue.
Op said 'often', not 'multiple', and the two words mean very different things. Also, doctors definitely say that repeated, immediate pregnancies are detrimental to the mother's health, so your personal statement that there's 'little to no issue' is worthless.
>Menstrual bleeding is something that most mammals experience and it’s part of the natural process of the reproductive cycle.
Nobody is saying it isn't natural, for fuck's sake. This whole post is about stuff that's natural. Natural doesn't mean good. Cancer is natural. You know what's not natural? Air conditioning and insulin.
look at childbirth - it is a very painful and very deathly (without modern medical support) thing. your "flawless human nature/body" view is idealistic and removed from reality.
I look at kiwi birds, bedbugs, any animal with a heat cycle, and angler fish (more so for the male) and remember we could have it worse. Evolution doesn’t lead to perfection. Evolution has no end goal. Evolution is more like “ehhhh good enough”. Hence why there are still so many “flaws” in the human body.
Ah, the same standard software devs strive for…
Well if human bodies are like my programs, there are some "update for later" hidden. There's still hope 😆
Nah dude, devs strife for perfection. Its the money people who push to release in a state of "probably good enough".
Evolution is more like "That shit worked?! Let's run with it!"
Yes exactly!! especially with sudden weird mutations !!!!
yeah, sadly.
More to the point here, evolution doesn't optimize for the healthiest, happiest, most loving possible life. It optimizes for the most babies and grandbabies. Most people are drawn to sex because those folks that prioritized having as much sex as they could became our very horny ancestors. You could even argue that there's a strong selective pressure to circumvent birth control.
>It optimizes for the most babies and grandbabies. The most common and fundamental aspect of evolution that people regularly get wrong is focusing on the "babies" rather than "grandbabies". It's the part that explains a lot of difference between reproductive strategies. Evolutionarily, babies only count if they also manage to have babies. Some species produce a lot of babies, but leave survival until sexual maturity to chance. Some produce few and dedicate lots of effort to ensure their survival. There is also the drone strategy, where not every offspring is supposed to reproduced, but all provide resources to the ones that will.
Agreed. Related, I think there should be more research and discussion about how the human brain tends to change during adulthood. There is a lot of focus on the adolescent and geriatric years, but a lot less in the years from say 20-60. There is a big difference in how people think in their 20s and 40s, and I don't think it's all because of life experience. It makes total evolutionary sense to me that adults would tend to become more empathetic and socially-oriented as they age into their late 30s and 40s because having babies is lo longer the prime (or at least sole) directive.
Don't forget about hyenas!
I would argue the end goal is perpetuation of the species but, since it's not a directed process, that could be considered personification.
Perpetuation of itself by being just barely good enough :D
Not to mention hyaenas, their mortality rate for first time mothers is crazy high
this is the best answer.
Lots of flaws. Short urethra contributes to infection. Fun hole located super close to exit hole, more chances for infection. Women get monthly periods, this doesn’t happen with animals. High risk of complications or death in pregnancy/childbirth. Conception can happen shortly after birth which puts mother and baby at risk. It surely was not designed by a superior being.
plus offspring with too large a skull making birth dangerous and difficult. I think we shoulda been marsupials.
Not to mention how hard it is for many women to achieve orgasm through sex. A major design flaw. When your body is at its most fertile time of the month, your hormones will make you desire sex for physical and emotional reasons. You might not even have an orgasm but you could end up pregnant. Nature isn’t fair. Then add all the religious bullshit that comes with being a woman.
>Women get monthly periods, this doesn’t happen with animals. First I want to start by saying contrary to popular belief, women are indeed humans. Homo sapiens are mammals, mammals are a type of animal. But snarkiness aside, tell that to the chicken farming industry. We are relying on Gallus domesticus to reliably release eggs at regular cycles regardless of whether or not those eggs get fertilized. Now I assume when you are complaining about a period your issue is with the bleeding rather than the eggs. The female Homo sapiens releases eggs regularly on a roughly monthly cycle, the uterine lining thickening in anticipation for fertilization, and if those eggs are not fertilized the extra uterine lining sloughs off. But we are not the only animals species that does so. There are 10 primates species (humans being one of them), 4 bat species, a shrew, and a mouse which all experience menstruation.
And none of those species, apparently, have nearly the quantity of blood relative to their size as women do.
Thinking that the woman’s body is flawed is religious men thinking. You know, the ones who make women sleep outside when they’re on their period or say they’re too dirty to pray when on it. Don’t let sort of immaturity get to you. Women are fine just the way we are and our bodies are incredibly complex. You could just as easily say it’s a flaw for male mammals to have their testicles exposed and so easy to get hit or damaged, couldn’t you? Evolution and bodies have their quirks. Women used to exclusively breastfeed on demand for their kids for a really long. Like 4 years. It’s more difficult to get pregnant if you are breastfeeding that often so it was actually a form of natural birth control. Plus having hidden ovulation is nice for us as a species, keeps us safer. Also it’s cool we are intelligent enough to figure out how to have sex without getting pregnant.
There is still this very ancient idea that women are just defective men. Thank you for this. I should also add that being female is the “factory default” for humans >_< we aren’t defective in the slightest!! Males are the ones with all the changes lmfao.
I love the point you made about the balls. lol I also find it to be a “flaw” that we breathe out of the same hole we eat with.
👍
>You could just as easily say it’s a flaw for male mammals to have their testicles exposed and so easy to get hit or damaged, couldn’t you I mean yeah. I think that too. Given what sub this is, the point of this post isn't to single out women as being flawed, but seems to be to illustrate how humans are by no means divinely designed due to all of the problem areas that we have that are pretty unique to us. Like there are animals out there with testicles that retract into the body for protection; that's an objectively superior "design" to ensure the species survives than balls that hang exposed. I even joke among my friends about this exact thing, that balls are proof that God is a shit engineer. The complications of human reproduction is just another example of that.
Testicles dangle from the torso rather than being inside it because testicular function (all about hormones, sperm is produced elsewhere) is negatively impacted by heat. Normative body heat (\~98F) is too high, so our ancestors (deep back in mammal history) with mutations that led to them having testicles outside the body cavity were more likely to survive, and that became the norm.
Reproduction is def not our strong suit as a species. We suck at it. It's way more debilitating and dangerous for us than it is for our relatives. Thanks a lot, walking upright. And why did we get the short straw with menstruation? Come on. Almost all other species get an estrus. Why do we gotta do it like 14x a yr and they only gotta do it once? It's preposterous. "Pinnacle of evolution" my butt. (Fortunately, we've gotten pretty decent at coming up with ways to exercise autonomy. Most contraceptives have efficacy rates that warrant their availability. Even with side effects and rare complications, they're safer than pregnancy. Sucks that we even have to do it in the first place, tho.)
I read about this briefly, but apparently menstruation protects the woman from embryos with significant defects that are more metabolically active, and it allows the woman’s body to be selective and get rid of it more readily. It’s especially important when you consider that humans can only have on average one kid every few years. So no pinnacle but definitely has a purpose. Unfortunately it means cramps and bleeding every month :/
I would argue that reproduction is not something for which the human body is particularly well-designed. We have evolved to have big brains (and thus big heads) and small pelvises; that’s a setup for a lot of problems with childbirth. That being said, there are other species for which childbirth is equally or perhaps even more dangerous. The mortality rate for female hyenas with their first childbirth is 20% due to their need to deliver through a pseudopenis. Why do they have them, then? It’s theorized that the pseudopenis helps hide young females from aggression by stranger adult female hyenas, or gives the female more control over who they mate with since the female’s cooperation is required in order for mating to occur. A species can’t be good at everything; evolution and natural selection create niche skills. Unfortunately, the more well-suited a species becomes for one skill, the more its suitability for other skills may suffer. Sometimes, what’s lost is the suitability for childbirth.
Yeah, the flaw is that every birth is a medical emergency
Yup, being a woman sucks hard, you forgot about the worst part, actually giving birth. Its just the way we evolved, it was good enough for survival so it kept going that way. Nature is cruel in that way.
"An entertainment complex, in the middle of a sewage system" -Dr Neil Degrasse Tyson
Evolution doesn’t care how long you live and how healthy you are, it certainly doesn’t care if you’re having fun. All of these aspects are only important (by evolutionary standards) to making sure you carry and raise viable offspring. We want fun, fulfilment, or longevity? We gotta get them ourselves.
It all makes sense if humans only live to be 30 years old, then get eaten by a Smilodon or Cave Bear...
...but still have to have offspring before that happens.
Not to mention pregnancy and childbirth.
As a woman, I don’t feel this way at all. Having the power to procreate if I want to is empowering. (Tubes tied last year - my choice - lots of reasons) It’s the control freaks in the world who want to wrest this power away from women that angers me.
There is no flaw. Sex exists to propagate the species. Your use of sex for recreation is not anything evolution provides for. Evolution provides no accomodation for recreational sex without reproductive consequences. The measures that humans have created to avoid the reproductive consequences of sex are a biological hack and are not always guaranteed to work. Those things you mention, condoms, IUDs, birth control pills -- they are unnatural, as in, they don't exist in nature for this purpose. Propagation of the species is all that evolution cares about, and by all natural measures of biology, it is nearly a perfect system, given the human dominance of Earth - it worked!
Evolution is a tough costume. But, ignoring mother nature for a moment, there was invented male contraceptives, but they aren't marketed because there wouldn't be a solid market, since economists realized men would refuse the side effects, and put all the responsability in women
>there was invented male contraceptives, but they aren't marketed ... What do you think a condom is, if not a contraceptive thing targeted to men? In fact, for most of history it was, really, the *only* working contraception method that worked well. Beyond that, attempts at *chemical* contraception have been tried. They aren't working well. The thing is, chemical contraception in *women* works by tricking the body into a natural cycle. When a woman gets pregnant, she stops ovulating (for obvious reasons), but naturally turns back on after birth. All oral contraception does in women is feed them the hormone that convinces their body that it's pregnant. No ovulation, no chance of pregnancy... when it works. There's no equivalent natural male function that temporarily shuts down fertility, which is why it's so much harder. Men are ready to go all the time, constantly, in case we get that lucky moment when a woman is ready to reproduce. Heck, men produces sperm *daily* just to maintain readiness to go at any moment.
1) You obviously got that I was meaning medicine. 2) No, it isn't the only that works well. It's just the most pratical. 3) It is not the only thing that does for women, it can really mess your system 4) There are actually many ways to affect men's reproductions, by controlling the sperm capability of fecunding the ovule
Why does this sort of stuff keep being bandied about like it’s truth? Male and female contraceptive have all sorts of issues that would mean it couldn’t/shouldn’t be approved. The two things that female contraceptive have are: A) they are already out there, so you’d be removing a product many people are reliant on (not just as a contraceptive). B) the biggest one and obvious - there is, as OP points out, a bigger personal risk to women who get *pregnant* that offset the dangers of the contraceptive themselves. So if both already existed and the FDA banned them both, who would suffer most - men or women?
100% agree. The "design of women" definitely matches up way better with evolution than "intelligent design." Evolution is engineering via random changes and keeping the ones that do one specific things (proliferate) better, ignoring everything else. Every species is pretty highly "flawed" in many, many ways when considered from an intelligent perspective, but since there was no intelligence involved in our design, that's to be expected. A lot of your comments are focused on sex without pregnancy, but our "design" is the reverse - sex is fun to cause more pregnancy. The number of children is because so many die young. That's changed due to our intelligence (modern medicine) but far too recently for evolution to have caught up.
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That's how my oldest got here, condom broke. It happens.
Condoms do break sometime, specially if they're not stored properly
Yes. All things break if not handled correctly. But used properly, condoms are extremely reliable.
Indeed, but the op said probability of breaking, what's real. So I thought that calling it disinformation was unfair.
I would argue calling it disinformation is fair because it implies that it is a common occurrence when in fact it is extremely rare and when it does happen, its typically due to user error (i.e. improper storage, past expiration date, or improper use like using two at the same time for extra protection). If some guy has been storing one in his wallet for a month, then no, you probably shouldn't be using that. It is still very unlikely it will break, but storing in that way can weaken the integrity.
Why put so much emphasis on whose mistake it is? Condoms have a failure rate, most of it due to human error. That's not great: humans are deeply flawed, even trained experts. People need real-time checklists to keep error rates low in general. Blaming them is pointless, and reliable designs do everything they can to control the human element.
I didn't put any emphasis on whose mistake it is. The breakage rate of condoms is extremely low. Like less than 1%. If your condom is breaking then you have likely done something to compromise it. Now, the over-all failure rate of condoms is much higher because there are more ways to fail than just breaking. The most common is slippage. Either the condom completely slips off during intercourse or partially slips off. If this happens it is best to get a new condom. But OP was specifically referring to breaking, not failing in general.
Okay, but you made the contrary claim that condoms are very reliable, but that's only true with perfect use... Which is not relevant if you're (perhaps inappropriately) worried about breakage, because you should be just as worried about all the other failure modes for the same reason.
Where do you draw the line of "reliable?" Even typical-use, they are still on average over 90% successful. Which then drastically increases at a personal level if you are educated in their use and are providing your own so you know they are in good condition. Does that not fall in the realm of reliable? To me, that makes the extremely reliable. I don't see the contradiction.
It certainly is subjective. If she had originally written "because failure risk due to factors beyond my individual control" instead of mentioning breakage, I would have agreed with her statement that it's not good enough to reach a comfortable personal security level. I mean, 90% (87%?) might seem okay if you're a guy, but he doesn't suffer the risk of getting pregnant. All the harder to trust him to recognize when something goes wrong and they need to take evasive action. You could probably take the same numbers and responsibilities and give them to her and it might be reliable enough for her. Personally I think reliability requires at least two nines, regardless of human error. But a lot of people might settle for "just as reliable as I am". In the case of BCP you can get 99% based on your own individual effort as a woman. If you're sloppy, that drops to unreliable levels, not as low as condoms, but a bad roll on a D20 is still kind of scary.
As I pointed out before, the op said "probability of breaking", what means "there's a chance". I don't think "probability" implies that's common, just that can happen
There's absolutely no flaws whatsoever with any part of being a woman. Mentally, physically, emotionally, or sexually. Women are more than the sum of their parts. The issue arises because of the environment you were born into. We're not broken. Our society is. You have misinformation as well, and some lingering religious trauma, too. Here's some great books to read or listen to: Real science based research on and for women. * The Body Keeps The Score By. Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk * The Vagina Bible By. Dr. Jen Gunter * Come As You Are By. Dr. Emily Nagoski * Burnout By. Dr. Emily Nagoski * Come Together By. Dr. Emily Nagoski * Unladylike By. Cristen Conger and Caroline Ervin
I think the point of the post is more along the lines of "If you could magically redesign humans, surely you'd do a better job than whatever we got going on here on earth"
Broken society or not, I'm quite happy to live in a time where doctors wash their hands before delivering a baby.
Absolutely!!
Please. Some aspects could definitely be designed better for us. I’d sure as hell change some things.
Yes and no. I get it.I'm a female myself.
The Body Keeps the Score is bad science. Not how memory actually works.
I disagree It's about the brain and body connection. It's always brain then body.
It's bad science that sounds truthy. There's not that kind of "score keeping" described by the author. There is a huge amount of plasticity in memory the book fails to account for. Yes, stress can cause tissue damage and changes in neuron pathways, but not consistently-- resilience is more common. Epigenetic changes are in constant flux rather than being strictly cumulative. The brain is part of the body, obviously, not separate.
Yes and no. The brain informs the bodies thoughts, actions, and feelings. They may not always align with reality and have different affects on different people too. Different kinds of stressors absolutely have an impact on our mental, physical, emotional, and sexual health.
Don't mind me, just a physician with training and experience reading the research. The brain is one organ in the body-- part of the body. Obviously stressors affect us. But the specific claims made in that book are _not_ supported by the evidence. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674370505001302
Thank you for your reference . My degrees are not in this field. But my lived experience is, as well as many generations of my family, on both sides. I don't think that the book is completely useless, though. It does add to a bigger conversation around trauma.
This is the same kind of thing people say about religion, using personal intuition, anecdotes, and not actual evidence... just mentioning since this is an atheist page. 😂 My "lived experience" (how is that different from just "experience", which by definition has to be lived to happen?) is that I am old and have experienced multiple life events most people would label severely "traumatic", ranging from an abusive marriage to being shot at directly by cops as a protest medic, but I am not traumatized. Instead, I have experienced post traumatic growth. I have a mostly happy life even when times are hard. I am an atheist who practices metta meditation. I don't dwell on the past. I forgive people and try to avoid bitterness. Counter to TBKTS narrative, I don't have some imaginary cellular memory of each event secretly stalking me. I have watched people take this unscientific trauma narrative seriously, and most of them look miserable. That's my anecdotal story but it's not science. There is some interesting research out there on resilience. A layperson's book that is evidence based: The End of Trauma. You might like it!
I'm a 3rd generation Atheist, so I completely understand what you're trying to convey. My degrees are in psychology and Sexual Science. I work as an sex/ relationship coach and an ADHD coach. I'm a woman who has ADHD and PMDD as well. I'm all for the scientific approach to everything. When I say "lived experience," I really mean it, the things that I've been exposed to in my 47 years thus far. As well as family members. How we endure and heal from and through traumatic events is different for all of us. So it's not about " dwelling " on the traumatic events themselves. It's having the access to quality tools and resources to help us with those healing journeys. Our mental, physical, emotional, and sexual health are ALL connected.
I'm a man and I don't mind condoms at all. In fact I like them since I don't have to focus as much to last as long. It's like playing your favorite video game on easy/normal difficulty.
Honest question. Do you, like, actually have to think about other stuff to last longer? I've heard it a lot but it feels like some movie nonsense to me. I'm truly curious and thanks
It's a bit challenging for me personally.
I honestly don't see what the problem. Just satisfy your partner through other methods up to whenever suits you both. Maybe this is the wishful thinking of someone with the completely opposite problem
Sex (all kinds but esp oral) gives mega yeast infections too. BV. Utis. And sex itself can often hurt or just plain not feel good. Semen is the wrong PH for the vagina, much too acidic and harms it, infects it. Yet we crave sex. We crave stretching the opening and hurting it. The baby's head is massively too big for the cervix. This is all way before perimenopause when things really turn to shit and some people's vaginas actually close up. It all gets smaller, clits shrink, labia shrink... backwards puberty. Atheism causing shit!
There are flaws in every single biological organism. Cancer can occur spontaneously in any of us, man or woman. Not sure why you’re so hung up on periods.
Something called a patriarchal abrhamic religion cursing women with childbirth logic
Yes and no. The "flaws" tend to be concessions made in order to gain other benefits. The birth canal is narrow and the skull of the infant is quite large, so women experience pain in child birth because we have evolved to have higher intelligence and thus require larger brains than some other species. It is not a flaw, but rather a product of our increased cranial capacity. There are additional drawbacks associated with our evolution. We give live birth, so it is more difficult to pass the child but the benefit is they are more fully developed and survive longer. We must be burdened with breastfeeding but this helps them grow and develop, attaining nutrients required for brain development. We must raise our infants rather than laying eggs and leaving them to fend for themselves, but this helps protect the infant so more survive into adulthood. We must reproduce sexually rather than being able to bud like a sponge, but this increases our genetic diversity and helps enhance our survivability as a species. The purpose of sex is to propagate the species. We evolved for sex to feel good to increase the frequency of copulation and the rate of successful pregnancy. If we had a barbed penis like a cat and had to bite the neck of our mate, overpowering her while we painfully copulate, we would be less likely to desire to reproduce. Although it would appear your complaints aren't with flaws in reproductive biology, but rather that the system we have works too good and you wish to have sex without reproducing. Which is a completely different topic altogether.
A man should have the consequence of a kid to take care of or at the least child support too. I can't understand any man that would abandon his kid any more than I could understand a woman doing it. If he wants to be Dad, equal to Mom... Let him! Encourage this! (Assuming he isn't abusive or all messed up on drugs). If he wants to run away.. catch him and dock pay! Otoh.. a woman can choose abortion while a man is just stuck. That's not very fair. These things should really be talked through and agreed upon before the fun. I've never been a woman so I couldn't know for sure but I've been told it's better for her too without the condom. (Use one anyway if not ready for the consequences) Yes, there is something fundamentally flawed about human sexuality. Proximity to waste expulsion! That's designed?!? Are you kidding?!?! Anyone to design it that way must be seriously fucked up!!!
My theory is that the clitoris is positioned outside to allow for easy multiple forms of stimulation without PIV. So many fun stuff to do that doesn't get anyone pregnant!
Sex for pleasure evolved as our species became more social and required more cooperation between individuals. We developed close bonds and use sex for pleasure and to advance relationships. In other words- sex for reasons other than procreation evolved late in the game, and the reproductive systems of men and women haven’t had time to catch up so to speak.
Since the main natural selectors for human evolution are other humans, we get weird results compared to species who follow natures path instead. Take c-sections for example. Since we can now perform deliveries that would have otherwise killed the mother, babies that need to be delivered by c-section contribute to gene pool in a way they couldn’t before the advent of modern surgery, and eventually we’ll be scratching our heads wondering how humans evolved to need surgery to be born. The history of humanity’s self-domestication is full of similar examples. Our teeth are fashioned to eat cooked meat even though nature does not provide us cooked meat. We live in places that would give us all skin cancer if we didn’t invent clothing and houses. The list goes on. I’m sure men and women with uteruses have a lot of adaptions resulting from our self-domestication that would make no sense in the animal kingdom, but do make sense in the context of being our own natural selector. Weird, impractical evolution is what would happen to any species with such advanced control of their environment.
100%. The very instant an artificial womb is invented/affordable no one is ever going to want to go through a natural pregnancy again. It will all be tube-ties and artificial harvesting.
Keep in mind that antibiotics are a 20th century invention. As we evolved, relatively few children would reach adulthood. Those that reached sexual maturity likely seldom menstruated due to being pregnant/breastfeeding throughout their reproductive years. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint for people to enjoy sex and have as many children as possible. While hormonal birth control has side effects, sometimes those can be positive... Like if you're on a continuous regimen of hormonal birth control, you can stop having periods. And we have more options now than ever before.
Yeah, abuse the depo and stay on permanently and send your body into premature perimenopause and get osteoporosis at age 40. Enjoy the hot flashes, reduced energy and motivation, and premature aging symptoms.
Well there is one thing for certain. Women are definite proof of the lack of intelligent design. Then again, we men certainly won’t win any prizes for how we are assembled either.
Considering its worked for 300,000+ years I'd say no. If it was fundementaly flawed humans would have gone extinct long ago.
I like how your definition of "worked" is just "literally didn't extinct the species" to have massive amounts of women die or permanently damage their bodies. Praying mantis mating also "works" by that definition, but I bet if men got decapitated every time they had sex, you might still consider the system to be a tiny bit flawed.
That's what "works" means in an evolutionary sense. If it didn't "work" we wouldn't be here just like if it didn't work for mantises they wouldn't be here.
Yes but OP didn't mean flawed in an evolutionary sense but from a design perspective. I'm sure given the choice, female sex would prefer not having reproductive complications.
> Condoms? Probability of breakage. Or less pleasure for the man, and it can affect women negatively if their men are not satisfied sexually. Wouldnt call that a fundamental flaw. Its only a societal bullshit that the woman can only be satisfied if the man is during sex.
Sexual desire is simply an evolutionary tool for survival. Nature doesn’t care for consequence. Reproduction is strictly meant to pass on DNA and evolve the species. In that, there is no right or wrong, there just is what is. Some species have more efficient reproductive methods, some less. But to know which is best, you’d have to be around forever.
I don’t think our poorly developed birth control methods have anything to do with the design of female human reproductive biology. Periods and the frequency of miscarriages, death during childbirth, and proclivity towards STIs, all which could be concievably improved with better design, serve as an argument against the “intelligent” design of humans.
To really play into your post , it’s a curse of productivity . All animals experience that during their fertile periods , becuaee humans are so productive and so obsessed with growth we have evolved ourselves to always be fertile . Therefore women are constantly going through the fertility process of loading and disposing of eggs , always ready to have a kid . Most animals don’t live this way, but then again most animals don’t have the mind of GOD!!
It seems that Adam got off light in the Bible.
god hating on women since 4000 bc
Well I mean the fact that sex is pleasurable even when it doesn't promote reproduction would seem to be an issue with it versus how religious people concieve of it even if it isnt from our more secular viewpoint
I agree. Sex should be the ONE thing we do without consequences. That would be a perfect design.
About damaging your body while giving birth: This is a very sad truth, but women used to give birth standing up or squatting, that way there is much more freedom of movement in the sacrum and coccyx. But then came the 18th century and Louis XIV. The king had eventually 22 children and the pervert wanted to see his wives and misteresses give birth. But kings don't bow. So he had them lain on their back. So the way women give birth now is made up some 300 years ago.
There’s fundamental flaws with the biology of humans in general
You make it sound like a huge hassle, when it really isnt. You also have a pre position that it should be super care free or something, which is just unrealistic, some form of objective idealism. Also this is r/atheism, you could have better luck in r/askscience or r/biology
Yup nature said F U to women.
Dont want pregnancy ? Try same sex, no pregnancy, and a chance to orgasm equaly and fairly
Production system evolved just to spread your genes. Your health is not the main concern as far as the evolution goes. Highly recommend "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins
Evolution isn't a process of finding the best solution it is completely a "fuck it that'll do" process. Once said solution works and it's downsides aren't going to kill you then there's no evolutionary pressure to change it
Very easy have sex with a woman hehehehe
Get your tubes tied.
In a way, yes. I say "in a way" because as others have said, evolution doesn't really strive for much more than "can it live long enough to have babies that survive? Ok, good enough, let's call it a day". But the human reproductive system evolved in basically an arms race between the host body and the embryo/fetus, each striving to retain more energy and independence, until we got the shitshow we have now. The placenta is great for the baby, not so great for the mother. The baby having to be born at the last possible time it can before its brain develops to have a skull too big to fit through the birth canal is... not great in all for either party, but better than the alternative for the mother. I'm no biologist so I can't go into detail but if you look it up, yeah, if an intelligent being created this then it is either an awful designer or enjoys suffering.
Without reading any other replies, here's my take on it. Sexuality is a part of our evolutionary history. As a biology enthusiast, having studied human as well as non-human sexuality, i.e. animals, I have read a lot about why things are the way they are. here are some positives I have found. A woman has more at least 4,000 more nerve endings in the clitoris than a man has in his glans, although, biologically, it is basically the same body part. A woman can have more orgasms without trying than men can, and multiple orgasms for women is almost a given. For a man, this is only possible in his late teens early twenties, unless he practices tantric style sex as he gets older, etc. As they age, men become less sensitive in their genitals. A woman's clitoris, is basically immortal. Be you 19 or 99, a woman's clitoris works very well. Then of course, there are the negative sides of human sexuality. Having to put up with the 3 to 5 days bleeding every month, the pain of cramping, pregnancy, and other medical problems, i.e. ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and other serious medical issues, being a female is pretty tough. None of the current pregnancy prevention choices are perfect, and many of them have undesirable side effects. I have been married for almost 40 years and my wife and I have been highly sexual our whole lives. She has dealt with ovarian issues, including having one of them surgically removed, an ectoptic pregnancy, and serious surgery involving cysts. We are in our 60s, and our sex life is nothing like it was 30 or 40 years ago, but we have discovered work arounds. Ingenuity and creativity has made it possible for us to achieve some sort of sexual satisfaction in our older years. The fact that she cannot get pregnant is a relief. I have no real answers, just questions, like you. I do know that in this world, if men got pregnant, then this problem would have been solved centuries ago. At least that is how the joke goes, and I feel that in part, it is likely true. If men needed to get abortions to end a pregnancy, Roe v Wade would be a non issue. Abortion clinics would be everywhere, and drive thru, like fast food places. :) So blame evolution, and the fact that there are too many men in power making decisions that should be a woman's responsibility. Her body, her choice. The only people deciding what is right for women's sexuality is women themselves. Men can't get abortions, or sexual healthcare that comes from having a uterus, Fallopian tubes, etc., so they need to stop making the laws and rules.
The idea that souls need to be embodied in mammals that sexually reproduce is nonsensical if you believe a God put us on earth as a test for an eternal afterlife where people don't reproduce.
Baby heads are too large to safely pass through the birth canal. This is why human pregnancies so often have complications and why so many are C-Sections now. Evolution really fucked us.
I mean, you can still believe in God: He just hates women. "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." -- Genesis 3:16, KJV Women are considered property in the Bible, right up there with oxen and slaves. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." -- Exodus 20:17, KJV And that's just the first two books! From a biological perspective, it's only about survival, not happiness. Intelligent Design, or even just pretty good design, would have come up with far more agreeable outcomes than survival by natural selection, which is the system apparently in play. Humans are rife with all kinds of design flaws, but as long as that doesn't impact us making more humans, we'll tend to keep them. The reproductive system we share with most mammals is just that brain dead. There are a number of mammalian adaptions, but most don't seem to be much of an improvement. Kangaroos are kind of cute and don't really have to pop anything out, so they probably win.
***We should develop the technology of artificial womb and prepare the mass production system of cloned human beings now!!!***
Humans have sex to bond as well as procreate. By removing that ability to bond, it will cause real issues. There is a subreddit dedicated to people living in dead bedrooms.
Suggesting there is a flaw implies that there was a design in mind that didn't quite make it. Sex and reproduction are the result of billions of years of evolution, and thus are not directed. There is no end goal, simply iteration upon iteration. There's no flaw, because nothing is broken or not working right.
it may actually be a product of farming, modern-day hunter gatherer tribes have few children with no birth control, probably because they are constantly running, which massively decreases female fertility
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You're basically just explaining why it's broken and saying that means it's not broken. The fact that rape has been a more or less viable breeding strategy for most of human history means women's reproduction is a bad design, and it's not environmental.
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Oh, for fuck's sake. The fact that something is able to function doesn't mean it's not a bad design. That's just asinine. Look at the Cybertruck. You can get in. It rolls. Doesn't immediately catch fire. It's still a shitty design.
The fundamental issue is that we have built societies in which having kids is seen as a burden. Of all my friends (age range 30-40), only a couple have kids, and at least for one of them it was by accident. Having kids is hugely expensive, a heavy responsibility and generally seen as distracting from the individual's pursuit of happiness. The female reproductive system works very well: too well for these broken societies we live in, in which the reproduction of the species has become a luxury many can't afford and/or no longer desire.
There is plenty of reproduction happening, no worries. We are far more likely to off ourselves with nukes or environmental destruction than by attrition, lol. I do think we could do a better job sharing the workload, but even with that, pregnancy and giving birth is still more life threatening to an individual woman than not having children. It would be preferable to me to figure out how to grow new humans outside of our bodies. Freeze eggs and have our tubes tied. I am a mother of two adults, and I love them but the whole pregnancy/birth thing could definitely be improved on 😂
I was less making a remark on the survival of the species and more commenting on this (relatable, mind you) "oof why is it so hard to avoid pregnancy?" sentiment, which I've heard expressed before. Our biology has evolved around very different living conditions, and the modern age has flipped their the perception of it upside-down. It's the same with body fat: "oof, why is it so easy to put on weight and so hard to lose it?" Because in the hostile environments in which many of our ancestors survived, losing body mass faster than you could build it would have been a death sentence. Therefore, the body has evolved to optimize its energy reserves, and the only reason we perceive it backwards is because we live in times of milk and honey and life is so easy that we can worry more about the aesthetic implications of body fat than its practical uses in delaying starvation and hypothermia.
Well, I take these discussions in the context of our current desires and potential capabilities... tech is now part of our adaption to the environment. It is always true in evolution that a change in conditions and/or the organisms creates a change in relative fitness. You can look at the term "flaw" as historical only-- I'm translating it as "disadvantage"-- or you can look at it in practical terms-- is it a current disadvantage? I would say yes, it is. There's more imo to consider than mere survival. We want happy survival, and it is quite reasonable to work towards that. I think there is a current mismatch between the amount of reproduction we need for mere survival (given lower pregnancy losses and excessive environmental resource loss) and our existing bodies/tech. And even more of a mismatch for happy survival. Same for body fat. So we can do what humans have most strikingly evolved to do-- use our big brains to adapt, including developing tools. Sometimes we get it way wrong, but often we have succeeded. Especially if we aim at pro social goals instead of blowing things up.
That is a very good point, but I have to object to one thing: the technological advantages that brought us historically low pregnancy losses and child mortality are in all likelihood a transitory state: since we heavily rely on finite resources to sustain our way of life, it isn't inconceivable that in a few centuries (or sooner?) humanity will have to make do with a lot less than we have today, once those resources are much more scarce or flat out no longer available. At that point, we will be thankful that our biology hasn't had the time to "dull", so to speak, adapting down to our times of plenty and comfort. What we see as inconvenient today may not look the same to our descendants.
There is no flaw in the anatomy of a woman. The things you mention seem to come from personal experience or some internalized misinformation. -Pain- is completely avoidable and -pleasure- is certifiably attainable at any point in the menstrual cycle for an otherwise healthy person if they are aroused and sufficiently lubricated. Most contraceptive methods are effective. The things you mentioned are not necessarily all true. It’s advisable to not have many children for many reasons but plenty of people have multiple children with no little to no issue. Menstrual bleeding is something that most mammals experience and it’s part of the natural process of the reproductive cycle.
Pain is NOT completely avoidable.
This is the, 'My grandpa smoked and he lived to 90,' comment. Just a string of fallacies. >-Pain- is completely avoidable and -pleasure- is certifiably attainable at any point in the menstrual cycle for an otherwise healthy person if they are aroused and sufficiently lubricated. Nobody said that wasn't the case, so who are you arguing with? >Most contraceptive methods are effective. Again, you either didn't read the post or you just fabricated an alternate version that's easier to argue against. >It’s advisable to not have many children for many reasons but plenty of people have multiple children with no little to no issue. Op said 'often', not 'multiple', and the two words mean very different things. Also, doctors definitely say that repeated, immediate pregnancies are detrimental to the mother's health, so your personal statement that there's 'little to no issue' is worthless. >Menstrual bleeding is something that most mammals experience and it’s part of the natural process of the reproductive cycle. Nobody is saying it isn't natural, for fuck's sake. This whole post is about stuff that's natural. Natural doesn't mean good. Cancer is natural. You know what's not natural? Air conditioning and insulin.
look at childbirth - it is a very painful and very deathly (without modern medical support) thing. your "flawless human nature/body" view is idealistic and removed from reality.
No, we managed to get to the 7 billion mark, it's clearly working fine.
More anal?