Friday, May 13, 2011

The demon within. Part II

Preferential binding by Candida albicans to various types of cells in a macaque brain (Denaro et al., 1995).

In my last post, I examined the relationship between sexual behavior and vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), a condition that occurs when certain strains of vaginal yeast (Candida albicans) become highly virulent. Clearly, the relationship is not a simple one of cause and effect. Occurrence of VVC correlates not with vaginal sex but rather with non-vaginal sex, i.e., fellatio, cunnilingus, and masturbation. There is also no significant association between VVC and the presence of C. albicans in the male partner, including his oral cavity.

The evidence suggests that the direction of causality runs in the opposite direction. These strains of C. albicans do not enter a woman’s vagina via fellatio, cunnilingus, or masturbation, at least not primarily. Instead, they may be manipulating the host’s behavior by weakening her sexual inhibitions and inciting her to maximize contact between vaginal fluids and colonizable sites on her partner’s body.

This scenario is all the more likely because vaginal yeast is common and thus provides a large pool of organisms for natural selection to act upon. Vaginal strains of C. albicans also show evidence of adaptation to saliva-based transmission, i.e., they adhere better to saliva-coated surfaces than do other strains (Schmid et al., 1995). In the male partner, they tend to displace non-vaginal strains (Schmid et al., 1993).

So these vaginal strains became better at spreading from a female host to a new male host. But what then?

Did they then evolve the capacity to make the male host more sexually promiscuous? Perhaps. But keep in mind that male-to-female transmission is much less effective than female-to-male transmission. Although VVC can develop on male body sites, the vagina is by far the primary site for C. albicans colonization and infection.

From the standpoint of C. albicans, the optimal scenario would be one where the female host goes on to infect other males. What can her regular male partner do to bring this about?

He could cease all mate-guarding behavior. In plain English, he could stop being jealous. He could even encourage her to have sex with other men.

This kind of parasite manipulation does occur in one organism, the isopod Caecidotea intermedius. A parasite, Acanthocephalus dirus, infects this isopod as an intermediate host in order to enter its final host, one of several freshwater fishes. When the parasite is still soft and immature, it cannot survive a fish eating its isopod host. It thus seeks to reduce this risk by suppressing conspicuous host behaviors, like mate guarding. Later, when the parasite becomes hard and mature, it can survive consumption of its host and, in fact, seeks this outcome. It now stimulates conspicuous behaviors, like mate guarding, and changes its host’s pigmentation to increase visibility (Mormann, 2010).

‘Cuckold envy’

In humans, suppression of mate guarding seems to match a behavior called “cuckold envy”—a sexual fetish where a man is not only indifferent to being cuckolded but actually derives pleasure from cuckoldry. How prevalent is this fetish? A Google search for the term “wife breeding” turned up 793,000 hits, many of which corresponded to videos that have been specially developed for this market.

Cuckold fetishists tend to center their fantasies on black men, perhaps because darker skin and heavier facial features help evoke the image of a rival male. In fact, some of these fetishists have rebranded themselves as members of the “interracial community,” presumably to gain social acceptance and to blend into the broader antiracist movement. Such individuals may be behind the apparent mainstreaming of interracial porn, as seen for example in the antiracist Swedish video Blanda Upp! (2010). One might draw parallels here between lesbian activists and the feminist movement …

This sexual fetish seems to be sufficiently common to foster speculation about a possible Darwinian (or pseudo-Darwinian) cause:


In his book Sperm Wars, biologist Robin Baker speculated that the excitement and stimulation of the cuckolding fetish emerges from the biology of sexuality and the effects of sexual arousal on the brain. According to his theory, when a man believes that his female mate may have been sexual with another man, he is prompted by biological urges to copulate with the female, in an effort to "compete" with the other man's sperm. (Cuckold – Wikipedia)


Baker’s theory fails to explain why most men have precisely the opposite emotional reaction, i.e., feelings of hurt, anger, and rage.

This seems to be true in all human societies. A search for the term ‘cuckold’ in the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) turned up references to 32 cultures. All of the references indicated intensely negative feelings in the cuckolded men, as seen in the following examples:

Yanomamö (South America)
Discovery of liaisons by the cuckold inevitably leads to club fighting between the factions of the lover and the husband. The woman involved usually suffers more than either of the male principals in the fighting that follows, as women are severely punished by their husbands. The punishment usually consists of a beating with a club, but men frequently shoot their unfaithful wives with barbed arrows in a non-vital area of the body, such as the buttocks or leg. In one instance I witnessed, the enraged husband struck his wife in the face with a burning log, severely burning her mouth. Burning is a common punishment, and many women bear immense scars from wounds inflicted by enraged husbands. (Chagnon, 1967, pp. 91-92)

Tukano (South America)
Adultery or even flirting with a ceremonial friend’s spouse is a principal cause for a break in this otherwise very stable relationship. A ceremonial friend who has been wronged by his partner retaliates by entering the offender’s house to break or carry off everything belonging to him except the hammock. This act of vandalism declares the friendship broken. Eternal animosity succeeds it. (Goldman, 1963, p. 132).

Quechua (South America)
The two strongest insults that Saraguro males can fling at each other (or curse behind their backs) are maricón (homosexual) and cabrón (literally, he-goat, but meaning cuckold). (Belote, 1978, p. 79)

Pashtun (Asia)
[…] for daows (“cuckold” and by extension “dupe”) is the most serious curse and adultery rather than incest the crime of horror. Among the most serious offenses against Pakhtun social order, adultery causes more trouble, mobilizes more sanctions, and ramifies further than any other Pakhtun delict. (Anderson, 1982, p. 401)

Greeks (Europe)
Conversely, the act of disobedience by which she damages her husband most severely is adultery. In adultery she makes her husband a cuckold (κερατ□ς), one who wears a horn. ‘She puts horns on him’ (το□ βάζει κέρατα), it is said. The implication that the cuckold wears a horn may be an ironical allusion to the sexual potency which his wife's action suggests he does not possess (Campbell, 1964, p. 152)

Azande (Africa)
[…] he is certain that she has a lover and he broods in dark anger till he can discover who has made him a cuckold. (Evans-Pritchard, 1937, p. 268)


Men seem to tolerate cuckoldry the most in societies with low paternal investment, i.e., ‘female farming’ societies of sub-Saharan Africa and Papua-New Guinea. But I found no HRAF reference to men actually feeling pleasure at the idea of being cuckolded. The closest match was the custom of ‘wife exchange’ among the Inuit and some Amerindian peoples, like the Comanche:

In many cases, the levirate as practiced by the Comanches approximated polyandry, for brothers lent each other their wives. This “anticipatory levirate” reflected an attitude of camaraderie and denial of sexual jealousy between two brother-warriors.

[…] Women, however, were not free to initiate liaisons. Adulterous men could be sued for damages and customarily made payments in horses or other goods, but the women in question bore the brunt of the shame, and her punishment might include disfigurement (usually slitting of the nose) or death at the hands of her husband. When pressing his case, the cuckold would address his wife's lover as “brother,” an ironic reference to the proper conditions for wife sharing.
(Gelo, 1986, pp. 29-30)



When I switched from a cross-cultural search to a cross-historical one, the oldest references to cuckold envy seemed to be in plays from 17th-century England. In these plays, the cuckold anxiety of earlier periods gives way to cuckold envy:


In A Mad World, My Masters Middleton fully realizes some of the subtle psycho/social details that Jonson develops with the potential cuckold Kitely in Every Man in His Humor. The perverse pleasure that Jonson's acquiescent cuckold derives from his subject position is latent, as Martin Semour-Smith notes, in the etymology of Kitely's name: "Mr. Sale draws attention in his edition to the dialect word 'kittle', meaning 'ticklish' ie. 'hard to deal with, touchy'; but he has missed the verb 'to kittle': 'to stir, with feeling or emotion, usually pleasurable.'" Seymour-Smith continues, noting that it "was also clear to Jonson that Kitely perversely enjoyed his wife less as a direct sexual object than as the indirect object by which he might be cuckolded" (xii, xiii). (Kuchar, 2001, p. 18)


In Every Man in His Humor, the lead character notes the strangeness of his fetish:



Who will not judge him worthy to be robbed,
That sets his doors wide open to a thief,
And shows the felon, where his treasure lies?
(Kuchar, 2001, p. 19)




If 17th-century England is the ground zero for cuckold envy, where was it beforehand? In some yet unknown human population? Or was it in a nonhuman species? Perhaps we are looking at an evolutionary trajectory similar to that of the AIDS virus, i.e., a lengthy period of co-adaptation in a nonhuman population followed by transfer to a human population and increased virulence.

References

Anderson, J.W. (1982). Social structure and the veil: comportment and the composition of interaction in Afghanistan, Anthropos, 77 (3/4), 397.

Belote, L. (1978). Prejudice and pride: Indian-White relations in Saraguro, Ecuador,
Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International.

Campbell, J.K. (1964). Honour, family and patronage: a study of institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chagnon, N. (1967). Yanomamö warfare, social organization and marriage alliances,
Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms.

Cuckold Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckold

Denaro, F.J., J.L. Lopez-Ribot, and W.L. Chaffin. (1995). Adhesion of Candida albicans to brain tissue of Macaca mulata in an ex vivo assay, Infection and Immunity, 63, 3438-3441.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1937). Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande,
Publisher: Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gelo, D. (1986). Comanche belief and ritual, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.

Goldman, I. (1963). The Cubeo: Indians of the Northwest Amazon, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

Kuchar, G. (2001). Rhetoric, Anxiety, and the Pleasures of Cuckoldry in the Drama
of Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton, Journal of Narrative Theory, 31 (1), Winter, pp. 1-30.

Mormann, K. (2010). Factors influencing parasite-related suppression of mating behavior in the isopod Caecidotea intermedius, Theses and Disserations, paper 48
http://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/48

Schmid, J., P.R. Hunter, G.C. White, A.K. Nand, and R.D. Cannon. (1995). Physiological traits associated with success of Candida albicans strains as commensal colonizers and pathogens, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 33, 2920–2926.

Schmid, J., M. Rotman, B. Reed, C.L. Pierson, and D.R. Soll. (1993). Genetic similarity of Candida albicans strains from vaginitis patients and their partners, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 31, 39-46.

29 comments:

Tod said...

A big part of mate guarding in humans would be the fear of future retaliation by a cuckolded male so if a man was not really bothered about being cuckolded that would make it more likely to happen. Also, according to Robin Dunbar when there is actual violence by a cuckolded man it's usually directed at his woman rather than his rival (because male-male violence is too risky).

So the bug could be seen as protecting its main host by reducing the male's direct mate guarding and his subsequent aggressive response to being cuckolded.

Finding it genuinely arousing may be a secondary effect of disabling mate guarding which occurs in a minority of men.

The popularity of interracial porn is probably due to more than just cuckold envy as most interracial does not have an overt cuckold angle to it. (One thing which is remarkable about porn today is the amount of anal sex in it, sometimes to the exclusion of vaginal)

Extreme mate guarding is still found in the the Islamic world.

kinkAmateur said...

Cuckhold envy is basically a subset of submissive male sexuality. The cuckhold husband is almost always very submissive to his wife and it's acknowledged in the couple as a source of sexual pleasure. It's not like an old uncle who's always being yelled at by his wife and who suffers in silence. In such couples the humiliation of the husband by the wife is something they both consciously take great pleasure in. The cuckhold husband knows how shameful it is for his wife to be banging other men, especially in his presence, as it is often the case. He enjoys it tremendously precisely because it demeans him. He would just as well enjoy being humiliated at the mall by his wife in front of everyone.
Why the black males ? It could very well be because black males are generally low status and that the white hubby is even more turned on by his wife having sex with a social inferior. I would not be surprised if some cuckholds were into homeless men doing their wife. On the other hand, the pictures often show the wife having sex with a very masculine (usually black)handsome male. I suppose that while that's happening, the husband reflects on how inferior a lover he is compared to the other guy.
I think psychology is the most relevant field of knowledge to make sense of this phenomenon.

Frankly, I don't know how much of kink can be explained by this parasite manipulation hypothesis. How do you explain rubber fetishists who are all about encasing themselves in a barrier that stops the sharing of fluids ? Is zoophilia the result of parasite manipulation or simply what happens when men who lack self control and are cursed with very high libidos are left alone with animals ?

What seems reasonable to me is something much more general, already hinted at in the post : the parasite makes the host generally careless and novelty seeking. How that novelty seeking and that carelessness exactly expresses itself might be beyond the explanatory powers of the model, at this point.

Anonymous said...

(The male brain seems awfully susceptible to fetishes.)

Anonymous said...

Cuckold fantasy's just a basic manifistation of masochism

Cuckoldry as a fetish has been around since at least the time of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (the writer after whom the term "masochism" is coined). Sacher-Masoch's wife, Aurora Rümelin, recounts in her memoirs multiple instances of Sacher-Masoch asking, begging and even threatening her to make her cuckold him so he could experience the pain and humiliation of the act. To that end, Sacher-Masoch created multiple opportunities for the adulterous act to occur, none of which were successful. While Rümelin indulged her husband in many of his masochistic requests, due in large part because to her dependence on him to financially support her and her children, she steadfastly refused to cuckold him. Rümelin's refusal to succumb to Sacher-Masoch's cuckolding fantasies was one of the causes of their separation and her subsequent descent into poverty.

and as said black men are at the bottom of the social ladder so as to add to the humiliation.

Psych disorder not parasite imo.

Tod said...

Obviously a man with cuckold envy has a psychological disorder but infections may well be a major cause of psychological disorders.

I dare say there are parasites which get into a human and produce a behavioral change but do not benefit from the behavior in terms of their reproductive fitness. T. gondii is adapted for influencing the behavior of rats so as to enable itself to reproduce. When T. gondii happens to infect a human it can alter the humans behavior in a way which is maladaptive for the human without helping T. gondii at all. Paraphilias may be caused by all kinds of infections including non parasite ones.

Jim Bowery said...

"If 17th-century England is the ground zero for cuckold envy, where was it beforehand?"

Slaves.

Anonymous said...

Slaves.

Slavery where?

And where is the evidence for this?

Tod said...

JB has some funny ideas about white men being cuckolded by Africans. Whatever he means, sexual transmission by African women to slaveholders is consistent with the time frame and more plausible than (presumably non-sexual) transmission by a nonhuman species.

Anonymous said...

Whatever he means, sexual transmission by African women to slaveholders is consistent with the time frame and more plausible than (presumably non-sexual) transmission by a nonhuman species.

Transmission of what?

Jim Bowery said...

Tod misrepresents my "funny ideas". Cuckoldry, in the ordinary vernacular, of whites by blacks is about as much of a problem as is cuckoldry of a male with blue eyes, mated to a female with blue eyes, by a male who has homozygous dominant brown eyes.

It just isn't that much of a problem. The female will get caught when it matters most.

What is a problem is a generalized form of parasitic castration arising from vertically transmitted parasites that have been around Africans longer than those "out of Africa". The low jealousy of the African alpha can prove deadly to populations outside Africa and may, indeed, induce literal cuckoldry by Africans of other populations which, of course, is rationalized away as a sexual "variation".

Dave said...

What is a problem is a generalized form of parasitic castration arising from vertically transmitted parasites that have been around Africans longer than those "out of Africa". The low jealousy of the African alpha can prove deadly to populations outside Africa and may, indeed, induce literal cuckoldry by Africans of other populations which, of course, is rationalized away as a sexual "variation".

If I understand you correctly, are you saying the following:

1.Since Africans have evolved in a tropical climate which naturally hosts many various parasites, they've co-evolved with parasites that they are host to

2. Many of these parasites are transmitted sexually and can parasitically castrate those susceptible

2. Thus when they move into other non-African populations without co-evolution with these parasites, their promiscuous lifestyles end up resulting in these populations being infected

3. And this infection is further increased by them not really being sexually jealous and allowing former sex partners infect the population even further

Jim Bowery said...

Dave, yes that's pretty close except that I said "generalized form of" parasitic castration. In ordinary parasitic castration the parasite itself renders the host infertile so as to route reproductive metabolism to feed the parasite.

Female farming increases harem size thereby bifurcating the males into a few alphas and many sneaky betas, some of whom are bisexual. This is horizontal transmission heaven for the evolution of virulence of all kinds. HIV, for instance, is so sophisticated that many doubt it could have naturally evolved! But even they under-estimate its virulence as it is likely to differentially attack the amygdala which is a known metabolic pathway to induce promiscuity (Klüver-Bucy Syndrome). It is easy to imagine all manner of sexual "variations" arising as extended phenotypes in the "independent female" situation.

Tod said...

Hmmm, as I read it JB, you're (or were originally) talking about the homogeneous fringe of humanity being susceptible to cuckoldry for genetic reasons, not being manipulated by a actual bug (the references to bugs were by way of anology I think).

Since Africans have evolved in a tropical climate which naturally hosts many various parasites, they've co-evolved with parasites that they are host to


Certain ants should have evolved effective defences to Zombie-Ant Fungus by now, as 'Fungus has been invading carpenter ants for 48 million years'.

Peter Frost said...

Tod, Kinkamateur, and others,

Interracial porn and cuckold envy seem to tap into the same inversion of male sexual jealousy. There is a lot of overlap between the two, judging by the sites that turned up in my Google search for "wife breeding."

Yes, there are all kinds of sexual fetishes. Most of them, however, have low fitness costs. Sperm is cheap, so it doesn't matter whether some ends up in a sheep's vagina. Bestiality, like pedophilia, is probably due to excessive male horniness.

In contrast, cuckold envy severely compromises reproductive success. I have trouble understanding how such a predisposition could persist in any human population. It's not as if sexual jealousy is something that men learn. Male sexual jealousy appears to be very hardwired.

Jim,

You raise an interesting point. An ideal environment for the evolution of sexually transmitted pathogens is one where most women are in polygynous marriages, as is the case in sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea.

On the one hand, the polygynous male cannot sexually satisfy all of his wives. On the other, a lot of young males are locked out of the marriage market, so you get a lot of sex on the sly.

If 17th century England is ground zero for the Western world, it's very unlikely that the hypothetical pathogen came from PNG or Australia. So sub-Saharan Africa looks like a prime suspect.

Is there any ethnographic evidence for cuckold envy in sub-Saharan Africa? Indifference to cuckoldry is fairly common. But cuckold envy?

Tod said...

Traditional African wife sharing

Frank said...

Peter,

If 17th century England is ground zero for the Western world, it's very unlikely that the hypothetical pathogen came from PNG or Australia. So sub-Saharan Africa looks like a prime suspect.

So since cuckold envy appears to have been abnormal around much of the world and begins to appear in English literature around the 17th century, you suspect English contact with Africa around that time via the slave trade led to the transmission of the hypothetical pathogen to England?

Is there any ethnographic evidence for cuckold envy in sub-Saharan Africa? Indifference to cuckoldry is fairly common. But cuckold envy?

Could it simply be that the hypothetical pathogen expresses itself as indifference to cuckoldry among more polygynous cultures such as in sub-Saharan African, and expresses cuckold envy among more monogamous cultures where males traditionally have engaged in strong mate-guarding behavior?

Perhaps mate-guarding behavior that has been strongly genetically or culturally ingrained is difficult to get rid of altogether and switched-off to indifference, and it's just easier and more efficient to pervert it.

Frank said...

Tod writes:

One thing which is remarkable about porn today is the amount of anal sex in it, sometimes to the exclusion of vaginal

Could this be related to a pathogen that promotes promiscuity? I've heard that anal sex is more conducive to pathogen transmission. And promoting anal sex also have the effect of promoting homosexuality and thus more promiscuity generally.

Anonymous said...

Guys, I've totally got this...

I have a theory that sexual kink (this is a kink not a fetish) derives from a psychotic reaction to stimuli. Where the person is unable to reconcile a fundamental aspect of sexuality with reality and tries to push the facet of reality out of their lives only to have the thing in mention resurface as a kink.
Half of it is that you agree to award this thing (cuckoldry, beastiality, rape, torture) with SPECIAL SIGNIFICANCE, however you conscious mind is abhorred by the decision so it rejects it.

The resulting psychotic episode then brings the conflict back as a highly arousing sexual kink. In a way you BOTH choose and reject your kinks and that why they cause so much arousal. If you lose the kink you simply you simply ignore it, as opposed to what many kinksters do which is try to defy it! But resistance is futile because the resistance is itself a sign the you continue to attach a special significance to the kink.

Jim Bowery said...

Peter asks: "Is there any ethnographic evidence for cuckold envy in sub-Saharan Africa? Indifference to cuckoldry is fairly common. But cuckold envy?"

I would expect cuckhold envy to be an evolutionarily unstable state unless there were something preventing the alphas from vertical transmission -- which is very unlikely as they are the primary germ-line.

Vertical transmission is oppositional to horizontal transmission in terms of coadaptation, so I would expect that once a pathogen evolved that induced cuckold envy -- thereby selecting out the susceptible male population -- the remaining male population would be in vertical transmission heaven. Cook for the required number of generations, export to a monogamous culture and its time to start rationalizing all those strange limbic impulses in "the arts"!

Anonymous said...

In contrast, cuckold envy severely compromises reproductive success. I have trouble understanding how such a predisposition could persist in any human population. It's not as if sexual jealousy is something that men learn. Male sexual jealousy appears to be very hardwired.

What about things like the contemporary sports industry, where white males expend great amounts of time, energy, money as fans on black males, ultimately paying for their huge salaries and providing them with high social and sexual status?

It's kind of like a softcore version of cuckold envy fetishism.

Anonymous said...

"What about things like the contemporary sports industry, where white males expend great amounts of time, energy, money as fans on black males, ultimately paying for their huge salaries and providing them with high social and sexual status?"

Are you aware of the rampant betting on comtemp sports in the US among males? Esp. football.

The players are like race horses.

Anonymous said...

Are you aware of the rampant betting on comtemp sports in the US among males? Esp. football.

The players are like race horses.


Yes I'm aware of sports betting. Though I don't think horse racing is analogous since the majority of interest in contemporary major professional sports isn't simply due to gambling. And regardless of how much gambling is a factor, the fact remains that extraordinary amounts of time, energy, money, etc. are expended by the male fans to build up the high social and sexual status of the pro athletes. The male fans don't gain any social or sexual status.

Women also have a weird thing for horses.

Anonymous said...

Is interracial cuckold porn really geared towards white cuckold fetishists? My guess would be that the primary market for this product would be black men who love the idea of sex with white women.

Anonymous said...

"What about things like the contemporary sports industry, where white males expend great amounts of time, energy, money as fans on black males, ultimately paying for their huge salaries and providing them with high social and sexual status?"

There's nothing all that unusual about vicarious experiences.

Loving to watch sports, betting on them, envying those with athletic talent (as with all other kinds of talent) are no different than enjoying fiction--vicarious thrills/experiences.

Anonymous said...

There's nothing all that unusual about vicarious experiences.

Loving to watch sports, betting on them, envying those with athletic talent (as with all other kinds of talent) are no different than enjoying fiction--vicarious thrills/experiences.


Sure. But "cuckold envy" could also be characterized as "vicarious thrills/experiences".

Peter Frost said...

From what I saw in my Google search, interracial porn seems to cater to Euro-Americans and, increasingly, Western Europeans. I found a few Japanese sites, so there may also be some interest in East Asia.

I found no evidence of interracial porn designed for African Americans, i.e., African American men being turned on by images of white men having sex with black women. I came across a forum where one commenter said that interracial cuckoldry is a White American thing. Black American men are involved as "enablers" and not as "consumers."

Anonymous said...

"From what I saw in my Google search, interracial porn seems to cater to Euro-Americans and, increasingly, Western Europeans. I found a few Japanese sites, so there may also be some interest in East Asia.

I found no evidence of interracial porn designed for African Americans, i.e., African American men being turned on by images of white men having sex with black women. I came across a forum where one commenter said that interracial cuckoldry is a White American thing. Black American men are involved as "enablers" and not as "consumers."

While this is just anecdotal evidence, I have seen cuckold-envy porn sites involving white men and black women. It generally involves American Southern men or KKK members sleeping with a black man's black wife.

I also remember reading somewhere on the internet from a guy (who claimed to be) involved in the porn industry that most patrons of white female/black male cuckold sites were white men and most patrons of white male/black female cuckold sites were black men.

Of course, I never bookmarked these sites/web pages, so you should probably take everything I said with a grain of salt.

GreenGlass said...

"If 17th-century England is the ground zero for cuckold envy, where was it beforehand? In some yet unknown human population?"

I think that if you are basing the ground zero for this hypothetical parasite on written references, you are not taking into account the psychological and societal pressures that may have prevented this kind of information from being passed down previously. The ability to admit to and explore one's fetishes publicly or semi-publicly is the privilege of individuals who are not so concerned with basic survival.

It seems to me that the more appropriate way to find out about the origins of such a parasite would be to find the parasite and then study the story in its DNA.

David said...

Hello! My name is David and I am currently enrolled in University in efforts to study Anthropology. I must say that your essays are very interesting! In Mexico, society calls men who are cuckolded "cuernudos" meaning with "horns". I had no idea that this was the equivalent to cuckold in english! This is why I am deeply passionate about learning Anthropology! Thank You! I will keep reading your blog!