Can you be monogamous if you're human?

Emily Nagoski accepts that as a valid question. She compares it to another question: Can you be an astronaut if you aren't good at math? As far as I'm concerned, it's difficult for me to see the parallelism in such questions.

To be or not to be good at math, golf, tennis, etc., is a matter of practice. All those sports are designed to be played by regular humans with arms, legs, a working brain and a lot of training. As far as I know, nobody is born trained to play golf or tennis; however, some people will do better at math and golf and tennis with less practice than others with more practice.

How do those activities compare to monogamy? According to Ph.D. Emily Nagoski, monogamy for humans is just one more activity to be trained for. Is she recognizing the fact that we aren't born with a natural tendency to be monogamous? Maybe she is!

Please, read what she has to say and then come back here and comment at the end of this entry.

The debate Ph.D. Emily Nagoski is suggesting is against the conclusions presented in the book Sex At Dawn by Ph.D. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethà, MD. The book gathers evidence that supports a serious revision of the biological trends of our species, the humans, concerning sexual behavior. Some authors have classified us as naturally monogamous; apparently, Nagoski sees monogamy as a “no problem” condition, something that can be learned and practiced—with no consequences.

However, the book Nagoski seems to dislike, suggests otherwise. It sustains that monogamy is a specific way of organizing reproduction, imposing upon the individuals of the species, a burden of forced behaviors that result in a constant condition of sexual deprivation or, better, of sexual uncertainty. This condition generates a state of unbalance that manifests itself in sexual deviations like pornography, prostitution, rape, pederasty and the constant violations of the exclusivity of sexual partners expected by the monogamy model.

Sex At Dawn presents interesting arguments that indicate the natural sexuality of the human species to be deeply in disagreement with what the models monogamy and polygamy have demanded from the human individuals of both genders. Both models were the result of a new form of adaptation demanded by socio-cultural conditions elaborated by humans in their pursuit of mastering the environment for an efficient survival.

The main technology—the one that caused the need to elaborate new ways of organizing sexuality and reproduction—applied to exploit the environment more efficiently is agriculture. However, such cultural innovation needed paternity certainty. In the original habitat, humans simply took whatever they needed as food—most probably they didn't even eat dead animals. Such habitat of abundance, was gone, terminated, by a planetary event. A lot of species simply didn't make it: they are now extinct. Humans applied the power of their brains to find solutions.

The result has been so successful—in terms of numbers—that today we are 7.2 billion human individuals walking on Planet Earth.

But the success came with a price: paternity certainty required polygamy or monogamy. And paternity certainty was necessary because only identified offspring came to have the right to that which was produced in land owned by the father, with the personal energy of the couple—or the “hired” labor.

So, becoming happily monogamous is not a matter of practice. No matter how much practice is invested, the individual remains biologically non monogamous. It will always be a compromise imposed by the needs of culture.

However, today we are a more mature species. We are more conscious of things like biology versus culture. We know today that ultimately we own any cultural elaboration that we may find ourselves imposing upon our lives. And just as we designed it a few thousand years ago, we are entitled to revise it and modify it according to the better understanding we are capable of having based on our latest scientific process of knowledge.

If we're honest and accept the imperfections we all feel—at more or less intense levels—from living in the conditions imposed by the culture to be overcome, then we shall be able to allow ourselves the freedom to find ways of enjoying our lives, our sexuality and our interaction with other humans.