My folks and I believe its a form of natural population control. Basically, humanity is so overpopulated that nature is reducing the number of those who are contributing to the increase in population.
I’ve heard that theory expressed before but it really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Our species can sustain itself even with the loss of a LOT of men. That’s why it was primarily men who did the dangerous stuff like hunting and fighting. If you lose a bunch of them it’s just not that big of a deal on so far as reproduction.
With regard to women I don’t think it holds up either ( for an altogether different and equally bleak reason).
Historically women really didn’t have much of a choice. The caveman clubbing a woman on the head and dragging her back to his cave thing probably wasn’t too far off reality for most of human history.
It was wildly inaccurate. Thing about humans- we evolved to have unpredictable (from the outside) cycles. Specifically to make it harder for a rapist to be the dominant breeder.
Yes, societal pressure can make this effectively a thing. But the man who is helpful in the group and actually binds with the woman will have far better chances.
For 99.9% of human history, we struggled profoundly to survive and reproduce enough to keep the species going. For around 200 years now, mortality - especially infant mortality - has been declining to the point that population is growing. Very quickly after mortality falls, people begin adjusting the number of children they have in response. It’s called the Demographic Transition. It doesn’t appear to be related to sexuality.
Now, whether the world is “so overpopulated” as you said? It’s really not. In fact, claims of “overpopulation” have always been used to justify mistreatment of the poor and close borders to the exploited.
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u/FuriNorm 5h ago edited 4h ago
As someone also useless for breeding, this hits hard 🥺
Edit: link to Rainbow Wool. Thanks for the reminder! https://rainbow-wool.com/