"Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man? The argument usually advanced is that in killing women you are killing the breeders, whereas men can be more easily spared. But this is a fallacy based on the notion that human beings can be bred like animals. The idea behind it is that since one man is capable of fertilizing a very large number of women, just as a prize ram fertilizes thousands of ewes, the loss of male lives is comparatively unimportant. Human beings, however, are not cattle. When the slaughter caused by a war leaves a surplus of women, the enormous majority of those women bear no children. Male lives are very nearly as important, biologically, as female ones."

It's Orwell so it's well written.

But even Orwell needs references to back up this argument.

See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-481882/Condemned-v...

Also, while the man is out at war, the woman usually won't be procreating with anyone else until the man dies. The news of his death will probably affect her badly, and procreation is probably the last thing on her mind at least for a while (after which she may be too old).

But yes, hard data would be even better.

Beyond cultural acceptability, there is objective optimality. Since men thrive to validate themselves by providing more than they consume (cf. article again), it's a comparative disadvantage for women to raise kids without the benefit of that surplus.

In a society where it's reasonably easy to secure a (male) provider, you're a major loser as a woman if you can't secure one. In a society where it's hard, e.g. due to skewed gender demographics, it's acceptable to be a single mom.

There's been a quite politically incorrect paper about black US communities, their lack of men due to huge imprisonment rates and higher mortality, and the resulting prevalence of the single mom model. I think it was referred to by Freakonomics.

There is some counter-evidence to this claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_john_letter

"Dear John," the letter began. "I have found someone else whom I think the world of. I think the only way out is for us to get a divorce," it said. They usually began like that, those letters that told of infidelity on the part of the wives of servicemen... The men called them "Dear Johns".

Or don't get caught....

See, say, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levirate_marriage

Anyway, reproductive success (or just the chances of getting a wive) are even more skewed in polygamous societies, than in monogamous ones. It's an alpha-males paradies, and a loser's hell.

When we imagine this apocalyptic doom of population, and mankind, we imagine a perfect world in some much that we think everyone will breed with everyone. Some men my have a problem(ED), some women may not be able to bare children(thus the creation of fertility gods), and some-be it male or female- may not want to "do it" period(homosexuality). We may also still hold old world values/moral beliefs, such as monogamy, dear.

The quote posted by Obiterdictum[1] from Orwell, one of my favorite writers, is very intriguing to me. The part that stands out the most is:

''But this is a fallacy based on the notion that human beings can be bred like animals.'' -One the topic of utilitarianistic gender values

Animals in captivity are usually force breed to maintain a linage or specific trait. Animals can build emotional bonds, however, in the wild we see very few mammal species that follow the same guidelines we find social acceptable[2]. For us to believe that every male will mate with every female we must also believe that every female will mate with every male, and vica versa.

Part of monogamy is breed into our subconscious, part is based on proximity, part is due to social context, and part is, well, emotional[3]. There are countless stories of widows never marring after their husbands are gone[see Penelope in The Odyssey]. We, many of us, enjoy monogamous relationships. Something about them brings us a joy that is very hard to put a value on. We can be tricked into them, stockholm syndrome, we can even be forced into them, rape, but we can rarely artificially create them, Truman show.

We must also asses the value of monogamous relation ships versus open relation ships(I am sorry I do not know the proper word for it); thinking that everyone will value them the same. I do not have enough data to pass judgment, although, the animal kingdom does seem to be doing well for itself ;).

Then we have to break down the proper breeding matrices. No one has said anything about age distribution in population. So are we assuming all the males/females too young/old to breed died OR are we not including them in the first count? To inspire discussion I will say we never included them in the first count...but then the situation doesn't really work as we have a new generation coming of age at some point; a boost if you will. Hypothetically, using the example given with a population size 150(aftermath) we are left with 100 women and 50 men. Breeding can be done in at least 1 day; a week at the utmost. Now those women are taken pretty much out of commission at the ~7,8,9 month. That leaves 100 women more vulnerable to starvation, illness, miscarriage, death giving birth. We also do not have the number of still births. What is the status of food? How did this population destruction occur? Too many variables.

For every perfect scenario there exists an imperfect one just as likely to occur as the latter. No person, be it male or female, is more valuable because they were born with a functioning set of genitalia. Value is always in the eye of the beholder[see currency, trade, marketing].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635248

[2]http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/fys/barash%20on%20monogamy.ht...

[3] http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/346monogamyAnimals.html

[4]http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/book01.html#notes5back

I had to edit and remove some of my comment as it became more of a rant than an acceptable comment. The tl;dr version is, we are all different and thus behave differently. Some may be more willing to breed for the sake of it while others not so much, however, we can all be conditioned so that we are prepared for such a situation. I am not condoning this. I feel that place male and female on a scale is boarding the lines of eugenics- to which I am more opposed than I am for. Some men are strong, while others are weak. Some women are stronger than a weak man. Some men are cowards, others are not. Some women are brave, others are not. Measuring strength is easy, measuring other- not so physical traits- is harder.

I think monogamy spread because St. Augustine made it part of the Roman Catholic dogma that became the foundation for all Christian dogma, Christianity took over Europe, and then Europe colonized pretty much the rest of the world. I tend to think if things had gone differently, we'd be looking at a polygamous world.

(Edit: Did I just argue sexuality is a social construct? Oy vey...)

  >I think monogamy spread because St. Augustine made it 
  > part of the Roman Catholic dogma that became the 
  > foundation for all Christian dogma

Sort of - I'm under the impression that Greek and Roman monogamy was more "soft monogamy" so to speak. You had your wife, but then you were free to do whatever your like beyond that as long as you didn't break your duty to the family, yes?

Interesting, most of the patriarchs in the Bible were polygamous, it was a famous rabbi's teachings (forget which one) that mandated monogamy as the way. For instance, here's Wikipedia on Abraham:

"Jews, Christians, and Muslims consider him father of the people of Israel. For Jews and Christians this is through his son Isaac,[2] by his wife Sarah; for Muslims, he is a prophet of Islam and the ancestor of Muhammad through his other son Ishmael, born to him by Sarah's handmaiden, Hagar."

King Solomon was known for his many wives. I think hard monogamy - no prostitution, no bisexuality, no mistresses, concubines, or sexual relations with slaves - was largely established as the norm by Christianity. I know the Romans and Greeks definitely had other lovers and orgies and things like that, whereas once the Roman Catholic Church was established by Constantine this sort of thing was outlawed pretty quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I#Nicene_Christianit...

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/558598/jewish/...

In the third link there is a rather interesting theory as to how it all started(hint: women made us do it).

When you mean monogamy do you mean sexually exclusive or socially monogamous? There is some evidence to suggest the later more than the former. [0] And some counter arguments. [1]

[0] Barber, Nigel "Monogamy is social - not sexual" ~ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201007/m...

[1] Johnson, Sue "Monogamy: are we - can we be - monogamous?" ~ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hold-me-tight/201003/mon...

In evolutionary terms, a woman would want to give the man the impression that she'd never mate with another if he was gone or away. Whether that's true is a different question.

The human switch from a visible estrus cycle was a change which allowed monogamy-with-cheating to be a much more feasible strategy than with earlier primates - who knew when mating was going to happen.

I actually wouldn't say that monogamy-with-cheating is the only human social/sexual pattern since humans also evolved an incredibly ability to change their behavior based on their social system.

But don't assume that a society that overtly pushes monogamy will actually wind-up with husbands always fathering their official children.

I do not mean to make you think that I believe that monogamy is "the only way", however, psychology plays a huge role in our sexual and social relationships. Many women prefer a more intimate one-on-one relationship, while men do not; or so it has been said.

In evolutionary terms, a woman would want to give the man the impression that she'd never mate with another if he was gone or away. Whether that's true is a different question.

I do not believe that all women want to cheat on their spouse. More data from a wider set is needed, and even then it is a matter of biology and social context; random chance.

But don't assume that a society that overtly pushes monogamy will actually wind-up with husbands always fathering their official children.

I did mean to imply that I did. It really depends on the social context and size of the group. A smaller group will be more apt to provide more intimate care than a larger group. It was not my intention to put the blame on the male gender by any means. Women and men have an equal role to play in the physical and mental rearing of any child.

Wars and fighting provide a ready surplus of women. In an Amazon tribe, the Yanomamo, I believe, 40% of all males die by murder or fighting. Recent genetic studies show that we have twice as many female ancestors as men. (Sorry, about the lack of citation.) Today jails, drug use, and general decrepitude keep large numbers of males out of circulation.

The most likely scenario. A million and one scenarios can happen but what is more likely to happen and what has happen.

Given that we have something like 7 billion people, the odds of losing half of either gender are fairly low. If it's because of something nuclear -- you will probably want to be on the casualty list, not the survivor's.

I wish I could downvote this post. It's flamebait, and it's irrelevant. Agree with the commenter who wondered why "debates" like this go on amongst people > age 13.

You're taking that quote out of context. The point is not what could happen today, but what could happen prehistoric groups. If you have two prehistoric tribes in conflict with each other it's entirely reasonable that you'll lose half of your combatants over a period of years. If you're losing men then you can replenish your numbers just as effectively, if you're losing women your capacity will be compromised.

In more recent history, during WW II the Soviet Union had an army with 34,401,807 men. The official tally was 8,668,400 dead from various causes. Assuming that this military included all men of draftable age (which is basically correct), about a quarter of men in that generation died. Yet since those losses were born mostly among men (the Soviet Union lost many civilians as well, it was a bloody war), the reproductive capacity of the society was not impacted nearly as badly as their population was.

Likewise, you're trivializing the serious cultural debates about, for instance, whether it's wise to send women into armed combat, or whether or not it's a problem for 90% of software developers to be men. It doesn't mean anyone is better than another, just that as a society maybe we should be comfortable with having more men than women in prison, in the Forbes 500, or in combat. Or maybe we shouldn't. Point is, that's a debate worth having.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589346

Thanks for the link, I didn't bother checking to see if it was already posted. I notice the sig/noise is a lot lower and only posted 481 days prior but the tone of the good responses are still measured and thoughtful.

That, plus it definitely "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Seems relevant to me.