Part of the problem lies in the belief that human society is made up of nuclear families. (Or other forms in which a man dominates a breeding group of women.) We are social beings, though, and in all other types of social creature, there are numbers of individuals who do not have offspring, whose work goes into supporting the offspring of those who do. This happens in human societies, as well.

Because women have, in the past, tended to die a lot in childbirth, a society which had superfluous carers would survive better than one which did not. Perhaps men who were less competitive for women would also tend to survive longer. Human societies have depended on long-lived individuals to pass on knowledge to new generations. We are, to observation, a group of beings with a wide diversity of ways to live together, and we have been very successful. It is possible that these features are not unconnected.

Some individuals find themselves natural celibates, to which condition monasticism is one solution (very large harems are another!) It not very widely successful now, since celibacy can be imposed where it is not the natural inclination. In others, who do need close personal relationships, same sex attachments work. Human society works because there are a wide variety of ways of living together.

At a less unconscious level, many societies have set up systems which channel the intelligent out of the way of having offspring. Monasticism has been one. So has excessive polygamy with the accompaniment of eunuchs, who were used in the civil service. This helps with passing knowledge on, but I suspect it may also have been to do with the insecurity of the leaders of such societies, who suspected that they would not be able to stand against such people. In Arnhem zoo, the lead chimp clearly spent some effort in keeping the most inventive male way down the pecking order.

It is noticeable that most of the most virulent opposition to the alternative ways of life comes from a certain type of male. The sort who like to give other people orders. And have them obeyed. Monastic women were fiercely restricted after the church realised how they had gained autonomy. Lesbians obviously do not accept male authority. Homosexual men do not acknowledge the need for all men to exercise it. Historically, the greatest contempt for the latter has been reserved for those seen as in the "passive, feminine" role. Femmes sole, who are none of the above, have been dealt with by being denigrated as spinsters, on the shelf, the rejected dregs of femininity. (But see characters like Miss Dove in the book and film about a long serving spinster teacher.) Or, when old, reviled, and perhaps worse, as witches (in the old sense as seen in folk literature).

All these things allow the "subordinates" of those who aspire to be alpha males, if only in their own homes, to see that there are alternatives, and it has been in the interest of these males to set up systems which declare their way to be the norm, and that the alternatives are fatal to the soul. This could be analogous to the way paedophiles, with their peers, set up a belief system in which they are right and natural. Because they tend to be larger and stronger, and because in their case there is sufficient truth about the ways families work in their beliefs to convince many others, the dominant males could have been able to inculcate their beliefs about the inferiority of women, and the abominability of same sex relationships in practically all religions in the world.

The argument that what they teach is natural is undermined by the frequency with which such teachings need to be repeated, and the strength with which they need to be enforced.

A hypothesis by

Penny