Re: The Origin of The Cravat (Was: Are Ties Phallocarps?)

Lennart Regebro (lennart@bump.traffic.is)
23 Nov 1995 10:47:15 GMT

In article <48u1u1INN4uf@hpsdlmc1.sdd.hp.com>, geroldf@sdd.hp.com says...

>I will restate the hypothesis: at some point in the human evolutionary
>past, penis size became a male status-determinant which functioned as a
>conflict-resolution mechanism; big dick goes first, you might say. The
>necktie activates this instinctive mechanism.

Nope, because then many more of the clothes around the world should have some
kind of phallocorp attributes. I can't see them.

>(Note: the previous paragraph is an example of a *hypothesis*. If you don't
>know what that word means, look it up in the dictionary.)

Which is hereby disproved.

>Ah. You're a tie wearer. I see. So perhaps it's not that you're unable to
>comprehend the idea of human fashion manipulating unconscious instincts,
>but rather you're unwilling to look beneath your usage of this petty
>deception to acknowledge its' functional basis. OK.

I never wear a tie unless I'm forced to, and still think you are wrong. :)
Interesting hypothesis, but after think about it, I can't see anything that
argues for it.

>You might argue that a man with a sword was
>treated with deference because swords are sharp and pokie, rather than as a
>result of an archaic dominance-marker from the dim recesses of our hominid
>past.

The sword most surely was a dominance marker. But so is an expensive
wristwatch, and I can't se anything phallocarp about that.

-- 

Lennart Regebro:                        lennart@bump.traffic.is

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