Opposition to World War I

It would be as silly to seek a single cause of concealed ovulation as to claim that there was a single root cause of the First World War. Instead, there were many independent factors in the period 1900–1914 pushing towards war, others pushing towards peace. War finally broke out when the net weight of factors tipped towards war. Yet that does not excuse going to the opposite extreme of 'explaining' complex phenomena by an unweighted laundry list encompassing every conceivable factor. As a first step towards pruning down our laundry list of six theories, let's realize that, whatever factors caused our distinctive sexual habits to evolve in the distant past, they would not be persisting today if there were not some factors still sustaining them. But the factors responsible for their initial appearance need not have been the same as the ones now operative. In particular, although the factors behind Theories 3, 5, and 6 may have been major ones long ago, they do not seem to be so now. Only a minority of modern women uses sex either to obtain food or other resources from a number of men, or to confound paternity and induce many men simultaneously to support a woman's child ...»