How different would civilization be if humans had "mating season" ?
How different would civilization be if humans had "mating season" ?
Let's imagine, a world where 10 month a year, men and women don't care about each other. However, twice a year, during 2-3 weeks, non pregnant women produce pheromone that men can't resist and start calling every boy around to breed with them.
How would this impact the civilisation ?
I know about David Brin's *glory season * but not sure whether any other writer explored that idea.
Lots more people would have the same birthdays.
I sometimes do the math on people's birthdays to see what holiday they were conceived around. Lots of early September (Christmas/New Years) and November birthdays (Valentines)
August = Thanksgiving which is why there's always family drama.
I had the discussion the other day of how civilization would be different if humans followed the 'have loads of babies at once and see which ones survive' style of reproduction.
"Oh hi Sarah! How're the kids?"
"Oh, little Jeremy wasn't eating as much as the others so I threw him outside onto the road."
From what I have heard/been told the "ignoring partner and sex 1-2 times a year" is a lot of marriages, so maybe your scenario wouldn't change much
Does it happen en masse or does each woman have their own heat season? Say, does everyone go crazy during the same 2-3 weeks or does it vary per person like it happens with periods?
In the masse heat I think there would be some obvious differences in stuff like festivities and each culture would adapt to these seasons. There would be a need to gather and store resources before the rut, and also to be prepared for the inevitable birthing en masse to come. We would probably have public holidays for the mating seasons and festivities for birthing season. In contemporary times, hospitals would need to do some heavy work planning and preparing maternity ward space to accommodate the seasonal influx. That's just what pops to mind.
Not too sure about the differences in the second case though. One option is, women would be allowed to retreat from society and become hermits during heat if they want to avoid pregnancy and this would be totally normal. Or, some cultures would lock them to prevent them getting pregnant. Coming to think of it, I think having women randomly in some kind of irresistible heat like this would be very disruptive and impossible to prepare for so I don't see much happening in the way of gender equality and women's rights sadly. I'm inclined to think the re would be a lot of gender based extreme segregation.
Option #2 is basically werewolves.
I'll point out that many creatures that have seasonal mating still mate for life.
I imagine it would look a lot like how Zoidberg’s home world is depicted on Futurama
first two things come to mind:
water-cooler conversations at work would be different. telecommuting may be an important option during the season.
My shiny seashell collection may be in jeopardy. the ladies love seashells 🐚.
Reminds me of how the Vulkans have it in Star Trek. I'm no expert but there was an episode where Spock went into his horny craze :)
This had been a theme through multiple Trek series. They call it Pon farr.
Yes, it's the Pon Farr, that makes Vulkans have blood fever. The episode you are talking about is Amok Time
O.O
Do you want to read this part again slowly, out loud, then consider this from a female point of view.
non pregnant women produce pheromone that men can't resist and start calling every boy around to breed with them.
Women have enough problems with unwanted male interaction, not to mention so many lies about women's anatomy. This makes it so much worse.
What, are you above biology? The guy is asking how things would be different if we were biologically similar to other animals thar have mating seasons.
Maybe sex wouldn't have the same stigmas. Maybe we wouldn't care who a child's father was and would raise our partners children as our own.
Maybe there would be less creepy aggressive people since presumably it would be easier for them to have their sexual needs met. Maybe the ones that still act aggressively are quickly delta with and somehow excluded or punished.
Maybe maybe maybe. Thought experiment. Hypothetical. Relax.
Are you just off-put assuming that this is some guys sexual fantasy?
its a hypothetical situation
That's a fair point, and indeed, it looks like pretty awful, you're right that I could have phrased it better.
The worst, is that the question came when reading stuff like Being a cat girl must be cool and I was thinking about how cat reproduce making being a cat girl pretty uncool
Do you want to read this part again slowly, out loud
If you ever see yourself typing this, please realize that it will have the opposite effect than intended, because this is super obnoxious to say to people
We sort of do
Post nut clarity for most of the year sounds peaceful, but I'm guessing people in heat would think with their genitals and wouldn't care about STDs or pregnancy.
Everyone wound have some STD and birth control would be a side note. Human reproduction would work like clockwork and without neutering world would have exploded long time ago.