How do promiscuous species keep STDs at bay?

[ScienceNostalgia101]

Bonobos have a reputation for massive orgies. Female chimpanzees have a reputation for taking turns having sex with the alpha male.

 

And yet, we as their evolutionary cousins are told; mostly by religious zealots, but sometimes by anti-theists sentimental about marriage; that we evolved revulsion to promiscuity to keep STDs at bay. I find this very hard to believe. Women so admire studs they use "virgin" as an insult. Men so admire the supposed desirability of men who get more action than themselves that they spend hours watching Bond movies that they could have spent having sex with their own wives. And as for "sluts," as much as a man may feel upset that she has other sex partners than only himself, at the end of the day, men aren't exactly known to reject a "slut"'s sexual advances over that, are they?

 

Sure, condoms exist. But that such casual sex even entices people that much in the first place suggests it's almost as though, deep down, our primal reproductive instincts are more powerful than any primal fear of STDs.

 

But there is another primal fear that could have kept STDs at bay; fear of outsiders.

 

If this past year has taught us anything, it's that travel does not need a sexual component to spread disease. All the things we used to be told were more innocuous than sex to engage in with strangers have turned out to be things that can get them killed. Conversely, bonobos keep having group orgies instead of travelling, and you don't see them keeling over and dying as easily as humans do from travel-transmitted diseases. Might the artificial stifling of our natural fear of outsiders; and attempts to pretend we are revulsed by promiscuity when we're plainly not; deserve some share of the blame for the mass deaths caused by an evolutionarily-unprecedented level of internaional travel?

[zapatos]

6 minutes ago, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

And yet, we as their evolutionary cousins are told; mostly by religious zealots, but sometimes by anti-theists sentimental about marriage; that we evolved revulsion to promiscuity to keep STDs at bay.

Probably just my ignorance but I've never heard that before. Can you provide a citation or give some examples I can look up?

[ScienceNostalgia101]

I'm afraid I don't keep track of the usernames, but I see this from time to time in monogamy vs. promiscuity debates online and I don't see anyone on the "monogamy" side distancing themselves from it.

 

EDIT: Huh, TV Tropes must have nuked those threads from orbit, because Google search isn't getting me there. Sorry, I've got nothing.

Edited February 16, 2021 by ScienceNostalgia101

[iNow]

You could’ve just said, “No. I’m incapable of supporting that claim because it’s silly nonsense without any basis in reality.”

[swansont]

6 hours ago, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

Sorry, I've got nothing.

!

Moderator Note

Someday, I hope, you will do your due diligence before you post, and include the necessary citations in your thread-opener. 

But as they say: the battle does not always go to the strong nor the race to the swift, but that's the way to bet.