Ever wondered why many fear a kiss? Why the irresistible urge to police morally? Why do some fear a girl who wants to be educated more than AK 47s?
It is more about girls. And women. One argument is that it goes against the strength of the family, the human pair bond, which forms the basis of child rearing and society in general.
Well- this is partly true. It is found that more educated the women, the more economically independent, and equal, the more the rates of divorce. This is true of modern as well as tribal societies. But do we favour dependence and subjugation of women en masse? Commoditisation and slavery as payment for more secure families? Or a milder degree of all this? Where do we draw the line? There has to be a debate, for uncomfortable as it may seem, there is need for such a line.
Another reason is that it is ingrained human nature to try and control the reproductive rights of young people, even when they want to pair bond and start families. This is because it is the only way to maintain divisions of caste, religion, culture and even status. This is the crux of certain organisations being excessively interested in this endeavour. If people mix indiscriminately, how will we maintain the compartments of caste? Religion? Nationality?
There is another reason as well. Dominant male animals, in general, want to prevent other males, esp youngsters from reproducing, and getting at all the desirable girls before they do. Enough said.
Why did this ingrained trait evolve?
Proto human societies were organised into tribes that fought with one another. Pair bonding was mostly within the tribe. The gene frequencies were similar in that tribal population. Another trobe will have another set of genes. They occasionally interbred, but this was rare. This was crucial in those societies. Suppose some new virulent virus came up. Even when most humans died, there are some tribes whose genes were different enough to withstand the disease. Similar for other environmental challenges.
The issue is, what is natural is not necessarily good. Many of these tribes killed and exterminated one another. Then they raped and enslaved the women. This has gone on for generations. We know that this is what is going on in many places even now. Now we should know better.
“Nature, is what we need to rise above” – Sometimes.
