I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Diane Duane's Spock's World on the subject, or (if memory serves) Jean Lorrah's The Vulcan Academy Murders.
Vulcans, sex and Pon Farr
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Well I must have misunderstood you, because I agree with most of this, and I apologize for my poor word choice, because I wasn't trying to intentionally twist your words.
But your last statement is a leap of logic imo. How do you define something "working"? There are plenty of other genetic traits in humans that have endured for a long time, and yet are negative or neutral, but I wouldn't say they worked or are beneficial. In this context I think all you can deduce is that the trait isn't negative enough to stop someone from getting to the point of procreating, or maybe it's just recessive in many people. As you said, "they survive because they survive". I don't feel it has to be anything more, or anything less. When looking at all of the life on this planet, I figure that evolution has just as much success going sideways as it does going forward. Ruling out something being negative does not assume it must therefore be positive. It can just simply be different. Or maybe you could argue that being different counts as diversity, which in itself is a positive thing. I don't know.
Again I apologize if I've misunderstood your meaning. You clearly know more than me on the subject, but I don't think that should stop us from discussing it.
Either way I don't think of evolution as that smart. Platypus. 'Nuff said.
Huh?
Since a platypus swims and forages in cold water, using her perfectly shaped, leathery bill for nuzzling live food out of the mud, it kinda makes sense for her eggs to be safe and warm in the burrow and not be live young, wet, bedraggled and drowning in a pouch. Also, the males have a dangerous, poison spur. Sounds like good evolution to me.
Either way I don't think of evolution as that smart. Platypus. 'Nuff said.
Huh?
Since a platypus swims and forages in cold water, using her perfectly shaped, leathery bill for nuzzling live food out of the mud, it kinda makes sense for her eggs to be safe and warm in the burrow and not be live young, wet, bedraggled and drowning in a pouch. Also, the males have a dangerous, poison spur. Sounds like good evolution to me.
What's the point of living if we can no longer use the platypus as nature's scapegoat?!
A negative trait can be retained indefinitely if it doesn't sufficiently impact reproductive fitness to eliminate it.
Anyway, I've always thought of pon farr as a virility cycle, as opposed to a fertility cycle. I mainly think this because I think it's the most interesting version. But it must be some kind of reproductive window: why all the sturm und drang if they could (and presumably would) reproduce anytime? That's silly. If it's a side effect of logic/cthia, who would rationally choose cthia if it meant every so often you're going to lose your mind? On top of all the other unpleasantness that comes with it, like the ritual insertion of structural anal rod?
To remove constant conflict? We know good and well that Vulcan wasn't really locked in constant conflict; a population that could not work together for relatively long periods could never have built the knowledge base or industrial capacity to build an atomic bomb, or an airplane to deliver it. If you trace it all the way back, it takes billions of people working together over millennia to create the knowledge and technique to build any complex machines like that. For that, you need a civilization not much less stable than our own.
So what else is there to conclude? It's a regular, biological mating drive, evolved for bad, brutal conditions that no longer hold in a civilized world, much like a vast array of human conditions are maladaptive now but were not when we were being shaped by selective pressures. So they ritualize it and make it weird. I actually like that part quite a bit, since it's relatable.
I also tend to ignore the stuff on Voyager that says that a visit with Mr. Sock can cure pon farr, because that is the dumbest retcon I've ever seen. And I've been reading DC comics for a decade and a half. There is no faster way to defuse the power of any concept by making literal masturbation the solution. I don't think any of the great stories ended like that, anyway. Imagine Oedipus telling Jocasta, "Thanks, but no thanks, fine lady: I've got my hand."
And I don't see how a child every seven years (Earths years or Vulcan years? if Vulcan's star is Keid, it's probably a shorter year) is that far out of line with a child every ten to twelve months, which is about the human limit. Assuming sexual maturity at fifteen, you still only have to live to thirty-six to achieve replacement. Maybe forty-two. That's not undoable. It just means they're harder K-strategists than humans, is all.
But this is all after the fact rationalization. Pon farr, every time it's been shown on TV anyway, has always been one of Star Trek's most half-baked ideas, based on questionable science and frankly impossible sociology*, held onto so tightly because it was originally executed with great skill. Unfortunately, every time it's popped up since (Star Trek 3 excepted), the execution has been as cockamamie as the conception.
*I mean, there's just no damn way pon farr was kept a secret for two hundred years. Zefram Cochrane was probably asking these people how they had sex five minutes after he first shook their hand. Maybe if he could watch.
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Especially when you factor in the average Vulcan lifespan of around 230.
Oh, indeed. They're shown to be significantly hardier than humans, so even granting that that's not their expected lifespan in a state of nature, one suspects that it probably surpasses that of early humans.
Also some side notes:
1)Sarek got his pon farr dealt with on the side. Surely he had an arranged wife. It might have gotten old hat after a few decades, but she was probably a game old lady, who wouldn't leave a man with no choice but to bite off his own tongue and hope he drowned in the blood.
2)On the economic front, one wonders how many Vulcan (of both sexes) engage in medical prostitution.
Also some side notes:
1)Sarek got his pon farr dealt with on the side. Surely he had an arranged wife. It might have gotten old hat after a few decades, but she was probably a game old lady, who wouldn't leave a man with no choice but to bite off his own tongue and hope he drowned in the blood.
2)On the economic front, one wonders how many Vulcan (of both sexes) engage in medical prostitution.
^ That's probably another matter that they don't discuss with offworlders.
I'm surprised no one mentioned Inside Star Trek, where Ambassador Sarek is directly interviewed by his good friend Roddenberry on the subject. How canon can you get?
(Incidentally, this indicates that Vulcans don't have sex in between pon farr cycles.)
Okay, this is what I've failed to make clear. As you already pointed out yourself earlier in this thread, homosexuality by itself is not reproductively neutral. Logically, all else being equal, homosexual behavior would tend to reduce the reproductive output of a population. Therefore it follows that since the tendency toward homosexual behavior survives nonetheless, there must be some positive procreative benefit to cancel out that negative influence, so that there's a net gain in the population's reproductive success. This is discussed in those articles I linked to above, which you really ought to peruse.
See, you're making the mistake of looking at it on a person-by-person basis. A trait that reduces or completely precludes certain individuals' reproductive output can still be a net positive if it enhances the reproductive output of a larger number of related individuals. (For instance, the gene that makes some populations susceptible to sickle-cell anemia survives because it protects them from malaria -- so while it kills off some people, it saves more people, at least long enough for them to procreate, and thus it's a net gain.)
And let me make very clear that I'm only speaking of "positive" and "negative" in terms of the influence on the number of offspring that are produced and survive long enough to procreate themselves. There are no value judgments in evolution; it's strictly a numbers game.
I understand your point, but you're still arguing that it must be connected to something else that benefits the race, thus figuring it must be positive overall. While this may very well be the case, there's no solid proof of this. I read the pages you linked, and I did see many hypotheses about it's positive attributes. But it didn't seem to have evidence, only theories.
I understand that it could still be connected to a net gain, but until then I see no logic to assume this has to be the case. There are many negative genetic traits that have no gain despite surviving. Survival is not proof of benefit to me. It's proof that it's not detrimental, but not necessarily anything more. Even if we assume worst case scenario that it's not connected to anything else and just purely random, would the percentage of people impact reproduction numbers enough to have a big enough impact to be considered negative? Let's face it, the worst case scenario is that it slightly lowers the reproduction rate overall of the human race. And considering the world's population, the worst case scenario seems to be of net gain to the human race anyway!
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there's not enough evidence imo to assume that you're right.
I understand that it could still be connected to a net gain, but until then I see no logic to assume this has to be the case. There are many negative genetic traits that have no gain despite surviving. Survival is not proof of benefit to me. It's proof that it's not detrimental, but not necessarily anything more. Even if we assume worst case scenario that it's not connected to anything else and just purely random, would the percentage of people impact reproduction numbers enough to have a big enough impact to be considered negative? Let's face it, the worst case scenario is that it slightly lowers the reproduction rate overall of the human race. And considering the world's population, the worst case scenario seems to be of net gain to the human race anyway!
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there's not enough evidence imo to assume that you're right.
See, this is where you keep misunderstanding me. You keep putting words in my mouth, and in the mouths of the scientists whose research I'm quoting, that have nothing to do with how science works. "Assume this has to be the case?" I never said anything of the sort. Nobody's "assuming" a damn thing, so please stop using that word. I merely explained the evolutionary reasoning that counters the assumption that homosexuality could NOT have a net reproductive benefit. I'm talking about reasonable deductions and probabilities. Science is not about blind faith or dogmatic assumptions. It's about asking questions, postulating possible answers, and testing those answers.
I have never claimed at any point in this thread that we have any certain knowledge about the causes for homosexuality. I have made it clear, I thought, that we don't know all the answers, that there's still a lot left to be explained. But we do know that same-sex sexual interaction is pervasive in nature despite its nominal reproductive drawbacks, and the most logical explanation for that seeming paradox is that it has some adaptive purpose. Yes, it's true that we don't have proof for what the specific purposes are, but it is highly improbable that there is no purpose. Science is not about absolute truth, it's about assessing probabilities. It's about assuming that the universe makes sense and that there are comprehensible reasons for the way things happen. Given the pervasiveness of same-sex interactions in nature, it is far more probable that there are adaptive benefits to such interactions than that they're completely useless but have somehow miraculously stayed around anyway. Not certain, but probable.
But do Vulcan experience pon farr EVERY seven years through-out their entire life? Spock (and T'Pring?) was about thiry-five at the time of Amok Time (based on dialog in Yesteryear), if only the first half dozen or so pon farr's can result in a pregnancy, then the population growth wouldn't be unmanageable. If they're anything (reproduction wise) like Human women, Vulcan female will go through menopause at some point in their lives.
During his descussion on the subject with Kirk, Spock said he had to return home and "take a wife." Not return home and get laid, or return home and get a T'Hooker.
So there might be more required during the first pon farr than simply obtaining sex, or producing a child.
In Spock's World, it is, as I recall, said straight out that Pon Farr is not a requisite for sex. Moreover, it establishes that Stonn died of a hormonal imbalance after artificially inducing Plak Tow, because he (along with some other Vulcans) considered sex in the throes of Plak Tow was somehow more meaningful, which further supports the assertion that Vulcans can have sex whenever they want to.
As to the Roddenberry-Sarek interview on the record (a record I quoted elsewhere, just last night!), it doesn't imply anything about Vulcans being impotent or infertile when not in Pon Farr; what Sarek said in the interview was that a Vulcan male "in his prime" would be too dangerous for a Human woman, and that when he married Amanda, he was not. Which fits in rather well with Sybok's backstory: Sarek had an arranged marriage with "a Vulcan princess" who (depending on the source) either died or entered some sort of religious order that required annullment of the marriage.
As to the Roddenberry-Sarek interview on the record (a record I quoted elsewhere, just last night!), it doesn't imply anything about Vulcans being impotent or infertile when not in Pon Farr; what Sarek said in the interview was that a Vulcan male "in his prime" would be too dangerous for a Human woman, and that when he married Amanda, he was not. Which fits in rather well with Sybok's backstory: Sarek had an arranged marriage with "a Vulcan princess" who (depending on the source) either died or entered some sort of religious order that required annullment of the marriage.
And as far as "medical prostitution" is concerned, I vaguely recall a reference to a "soul healer."
There's a comment about how the ferocity of sex in pon farr makes up for its paucity otherwise. Something like that.
Also, pon farr must not always result in children, because otherwise Spock would have many more half-brothers than Sybok.
The Vanguard series, starting in book one, as well as in David Mack's mirror universe novel The Sorrows of Empire.
T'Prynn seems to have had a difficult time--Sten had the option to defeat her in mortal combat, sexual orientation notwithstanding. The Sorrows of Empire, meanwhile, mentions proscriptions against same-sex contact (Mirror Universe, granted). And if Memory Beta's article about Selar's brother Slon is correct, this suggests a certain amount of homophobia among at least some Vulcans.
This doesn't necessarily mean that homophobia is the norm for the Vulcan species: Vulcans are, well, an entire species. Still, it exists.
Interestingly enough, this doesn't seem to be the case for the Romulans.
Rough Beasts of Empire establishes Gell Kamemor, a Romulan ambassador previously appearing in Serpents Among the Ruins as Praetor. It also establishes Kamemor as having survived her wife.
Romulans may discriminate on any number of grounds. Sexual orientation is apparently not one of them.
Romulans may discriminate on any number of grounds. Sexual orientation is apparently not one of them.
I've got a transcript of that Sarek/Roddenberry "interview" at home. I'll need to post it when I get the chance...
Actually, it was stated in Harbinger that T'Prynn had been "denied the purgative release" of Pon farr for more than five decades, ever since killing Sten during the kal-if-fee. (Though this was a consequence of her status as a val'reth.) So, for all we know, T'Prynn actually might not yet have experienced Pon farr. (Though her relations with Anna Sandesjo suggested feelings and drives very similar to those associated with Pon farr.)
The description of her battle against Sten implies strongly that, even though Sten was solidly in the grip of the Plak Tow, T'Prynn was not, which would mean they were not perfectly in synch, despite their childhood betrothal ceremony. Whether this was a result of biological timing or a consequence of her homosexuality has not been established.
Finally, she would have been roughly 22 years of age when this kal-if-fee took place. (T'Prynn was born in 2190, and her fight with Sten happened in 2212.)
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