> What kind of advantage might this sort of thing have given humans in the past?
You're skipping a very important detail in all of this.
The gender.
A sick man deserves contempt, a sick woman deserves attention and caring. Which explains why most men insist they're fine, even when at the brink of death, while women are incapacitated with the slightest headache.
In my experience, women have a tendency of succumbing to periodic ill-feeling. All of it subconscious. This brings the attention of men and family. That constant and consistent caring is habit forming and serves her well in the future when she becomes genuinely sick (or pregnant). There's your evolutionary justification.
This seems like an extreme example of the above. Probably a high status female overdid it and the rest of the females were just mimicking her behavior, all of it subconsciously. While human beings are drawn to certain behaviors instinctively, the nuts and bolts of the behavior is learned and passed down culturally. In other words, women may have a predilection toward periodic ill-feeling, but in what manner they express it is up to them ... or in this case, up to the high-status female.
I suffer quite continual pain in my back, and have a bad habit of working through an illness to the point of exhaustion. I know plenty of friends who do the same, rarely complaining.
A girl and her brother that I know are constantly ill - and moaning about the smallest thing.
So it is a personality issue, I suspect, nothing to do with gender.
Every rule can have exceptions. I do not know if there is any data to back this up, though. Unless you consider that it seems women seem to visit doctors or medical institutions more much often than men (at least in the countries I know of). That could be an indication of this underlying behavior.
You've been viciously downvoted here, but you should have expected it. Hacker News has a pretty libertarian contingent that thinks that the acknowledgment that people have different experiences is equivalent to asserting that people have different capacities, because of an underlying assumption that the baseline experience is equal for everyone. The kind of thought process that sees it as obvious that a claim that Affirmative Action is needed is equivalent to a claim that minorities are naturally inferior.
Contrary to what some people say, these situations are very often a gender thing.
They tend to happen in places where girls are most limited in expression, at times when they are most limited in expression. The range of behavior considered normal for teenage girls in the US is severely limited compared to what is considered acceptable for teenage boys.
When I was in high school, I could wear the same dirty jeans every day, I could start a band that wore mouse ears and played top 40 pop songs backwards, I could spend 12 hours straight programming my computer at home, I could go to school without shoes on and completely ignore my hair unto entropy.
If I were a girl, not plucking my eyebrows would drop me to low social status at school, and depending on the school maybe even just not wearing makeup would do it. Combine that with letting your hair go to pot and locking yourself away in your room for 12 hours to program your computer, and you might be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder like aversion or oppositional defiant at best, thrown out of the house at worst. In certain communities around the world, the triggers for deviance might start if you wore pants, or just asked to wear pants, or refused to go to the dance. I swear I've read nationally distributed news articles that start with girls choosing to wear a suit to prom, and end in death threats.
Being sick, or possessed by demons, isn't punished in society like the very real female transgressions of sloppy dressing, or being obsessed with math. Sickness and possession are signs of physical or spiritual attack that make you a victim, rather than signs of deviance that make you a threat to the social order.
Expression that relieves stress has a lot wider acceptable range in certain groups than in others. The groups with the narrowest options for expression tend to find more bizarre loopholes (sickness and religious mania), resulting in behaviors that seem odd.
As a boy, the only thing I was expected to avoid was "acting like a girl." Girls are actually expected to act like girls - whatever strange set of largely male-dictated behavior that entails.
edit: Fainting fits were once an expected behavior for women, and special furniture was required. Hysteria was thought of as a disease of female reproductive organs, and was cured through orgasm.
> You've been viciously downvoted here, but you should have expected it.
Oh, I did. I don't say things because I think they will be popular.
In fact, it isn't even Hacker News. If you drew a random group of people from any Western society and I came into the room and made that statement verbatim ... well, I would be shocked if they didn't start throwing chairs at me.
Our culture is so fundamentally sick that it not only pretends there is no significant difference between genders, it pretends there are no fundamental differences between people in general.
The differences are there and they are stark.
The absolute worst part is that after making the assumption that we are all identical, any behavior outside of the defined norm is defined as aberrant and is treated, usually with drugs. That is absolutely sick.
What's that? You can't do calculus? Well, you must be a moron. A girl that doesn't like math? We're not trying hard enough. A girl that prefers to watch The Bachelor instead of learning how to write in C? Unspeakable.
Now that is misogyny. Hatred of the feminine and its masculinization.
Those who read my comment and saw something negative in it, you're projecting. The feminine is beautiful and just because a certain behavior is disgusting in a man, doesn't make it so in a woman.
Oh, I disagree with you now, sorry. You're saying that there's a way that women are and a way that men are that isn't dictated by society, but dictates it, and any deviation is unnatural. I'm saying that women are restricted to certain manners of expression to conform to norms, so they sometimes behave in peculiar ways in order to express themselves yet not be punished. Your argument can be used to justify any form of prejudice that has ever existed, and doesn't rest on any evidence other than your own stereotypes.
You actually think that sick men deserve contempt. And that men and women who behave identically should inspire disgust. And you insist that other people are the ones who are trying to force people into norms. Very ugly.
> You're saying that there's a way that women are and a way that men are that isn't dictated by society
Yes. Just like every other sexual species on this planet has a male and female nature that dictates varied behavior, so do we.
Give me an example of a species where that isn't the case?
> and any deviation is unnatural.
Any deviation is impossible. It's hard-coded. Yes, there might be a 0.1% of the population that doesn't comply, but those are mutations.
I strongly believe that even if 1% of the population is exhibiting a behavior, it is not a deviation. It is normal. At least, normal for that 1% group.
> Your argument can be used to justify any form of prejudice that has ever existed
No. See the above. Again, if it's defined by nature, then no deviation is possible. In other words, what you're witnessing is not deviation. It is nature. On the contrary, that specific idea can be used to stop repression.
> doesn't rest on any evidence other than your own stereotypes
It's an idea derived from simple logic. Not data or stereotypes. If you're seeing a large group of people exhibiting behavior, it is natural for them. Regardless of how wrong you may think their behavior is, there is nothing wrong with it. Trying to force them to behave a certain way is wrong.
> You actually think that sick men deserve contempt.
No. However, a sickly man will be perceived as weak by other men and that will elicit contempt. Which explains why FDR desperately tried to hide the fact that he had polio and was confined to a wheel chair ... there are many many other examples of this behavior.
> And that men and women who behave identically should inspire disgust.
Men and women don't behave identically. When they do, they are forced to either by social norms or through actual threat of force. And that's sick.
Again, please provide an example of a species where the male and female behave identically?
> And you insist that other people are the ones who are trying to force people into norms.
Men and women often behave identically, just as men and other men often behave identically. I'm a man and I don't feel contempt for sick men. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be having this conversation, I just misinterpreted your first comment. Go on defending the completely unthreatened by force right of women to watch The Bachelor.
I don't make a habit of responding to comments, but your response contained 4 insults in a single sentence of 8 words, which is seriously impressive. Kudos to you sir!
You're skipping a very important detail in all of this.
The gender.
A sick man deserves contempt, a sick woman deserves attention and caring. Which explains why most men insist they're fine, even when at the brink of death, while women are incapacitated with the slightest headache.
In my experience, women have a tendency of succumbing to periodic ill-feeling. All of it subconscious. This brings the attention of men and family. That constant and consistent caring is habit forming and serves her well in the future when she becomes genuinely sick (or pregnant). There's your evolutionary justification.
This seems like an extreme example of the above. Probably a high status female overdid it and the rest of the females were just mimicking her behavior, all of it subconsciously. While human beings are drawn to certain behaviors instinctively, the nuts and bolts of the behavior is learned and passed down culturally. In other words, women may have a predilection toward periodic ill-feeling, but in what manner they express it is up to them ... or in this case, up to the high-status female.