Part last of my extended discussion of
The Evolution of Desire concludes today, with this final entry on chapter twelve. The material in the chapter isn't that scintillating, but it motivated two long psychological digressions from me, the first on how/when women choose sexual partners vs. friends, and the second on the apparently controversial topic of an evolutionary bias towards rape.
There won't be any more
Evolution of Desire coming, but I've had two other books on male/female psychology sitting on my desk for weeks, waiting their turn for some review/discussion. I've also got an interesting book on the psychological manifestations that drive humans to scapegoat and condemn, such as during historical witch trials, the 1990s "Satanic Panic" outbreak centered around American daycare centers, the modern day penis-snatching/shrinking witchcraft panics in Africa, etc. Plus a cool book on the History of Witchcraft that I selected largely for research purposes, then found far more interesting than anticipated. Plus I've still got to get to reviewing/discussing the three recent atheist books by Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. I need to polish those off and get the books back too, since I just realized that I have a bag full of books from my university's library; books I checked out sometime before Xmas. Given that I graduated and am no longer a student there, I hope they'll let me slip them back into the return box without fining me more than the books would have cost in the first place. If not, what can they do; hold my diploma? (Oh wait...)
Anyway, on to the last chapter of The Evolution of Desire. There's a closing note on the whole book and review process at the end, so if you get bored choking down these 5800 words, skip to the end.
Chapter Twelve: The Mysteries of Human MatingThe last chapter in the Evolution of Desire is pretty clearly the junk drawer of the book. Stuff that's useful, but didn't fit neatly anywhere else. Mysteries, as Buss calls them. Homosexuality, rape, gender bias in emotional anticipation, "mate poaching," the struggle and mixed-metaphor that is non-sexual cross-gender friendship, and more. Are these questions answered? Will I get to all the lengthy digressions I've been saving up for just the right moment? Let's find out.
What About Homosexuality? The problems with homosexuality are pretty obvious, when viewed from an evolutionary standpoint. "Among sexually reproducing species, males and females must mate with each other for successful reproduction. Any orientation that lowers the likelihood of successful reproduction will be ruthlessly weeded out." Buss goes on to say that of the hundreds of lectures he's given on the topics covered in this book, questions about the biological persistence of homosexuality are the most frequently asked. So he must have some pretty good answers by now, eh? Not so much, as it turns out.
There are two key facts about the issue that baffle. Homosexuality is at least partially inheritable, as proven by numerous twin studies. And it's a proven fact that homosexual men tend to father fewer children than heterosexual men. (This might seem self-evident, but if enough gay men were donating sperm, or marrying for convenience, that could explain the persistence of a seemingly self-defeating genetic trait.) Therefore, the big question is, "How can a sexual orientation that is partly inherited continue to persist in the face of continual selection against it?" Theories abound.
One is the
kin altruism theory. Initially advanced by renowned naturalist E. O. Wilson, this theory holds that while homosexuals have a lower chance of reproducing, they are able to devote more of their resources to raising the children of their blood kin, thus indirectly furthering their genetics. The idea isn't purely conceptual; gay men tend to be born later in families and have older brothers, so the theory is that their odds of mating successfully probably weren't that good anyway. Also, since homosexual men tend to be more empathic and feminine (Buss cites nothing to back up this generalization), they may be more altruistic.
There are problems with the theory, ones so substantial that Buss says it's largely lost support in recent years. First of all, it does nothing to explain why people would be sexually attracted to their own gender. After all, the
kin altruism theory would work far better with people who were born asexual or infertile than homosexual. Secondly, it's not clear why people with greater altruism would necessarily direct that caring towards blood relations, rather than adopting, or helping out society in general. Thirdly, even if the theory is true, the genetic loss from bypassing parenting is huge, and it's not clear that slightly boosting the reproductive success of a sibling would offset that.
A newer explanation could be called the
mentor/pupil theory. It posits that the key to understanding homosexual persistence is homoerotic
behavior, not necessarily
orientation. The idea is that for men, especially adolescent boys, there were great benefits to be had by allying themselves closely to older, resource-rich males. "Proclivities for same-sex sexual behavior evolved, according to this theory, because of the alliance benefits provided their practitioners."
There are criticisms, of course. First off, homosexual behavior is anything but universal across cultures. This theory works for ancient Greece and a few other cultures, but the theorized behavior is not seen in most societies throughout history. Secondly, it still doesn't explain the sex. There are plenty of same-sex, non-sexual affiliations and bonds throughout human history, and they can be useful without leading to a lack of reproductive options for one or both participants. Third, it might explain homoerotic behavior, but doesn't explain why it would be exclusive. Bisexuality would seem a better option, evolutionarily speaking. Boost the economic/social prospects, and still get to pass on your genes directly.
Another possibility is the
nice-guy theory. This posits that homosexuality is a rare by-product of genes designed for another function; so-called feminine traits such as kindness, altruism, etc. All men have some of these genes, but some men hit a sort of genetic lottery and get enough that it affects their sexual orientation. Problems with this theory are not lacking: Why wouldn't men be nice and heterosexual? What proof is there that "nice" genes are necessarily female? Furthermore, while gay men are, on average, slightly more empathic, sensitive, and less aggressive than heterosexual men, there's no evidence that women prefer to mate with nice guys. In fact, there's quite a bit that argues against that, much of it found in the last chapter of this book.
Having disposed with the three major theories, Buss throws out a bunch of other half-baked ideas in need of more research: he mentions the "gay gene" that other researchers failed to confirm, mentions that women are more flexible in their sexual orientation (LUGs) while men tend to be more firmly gay or straight, and says more work is needed in the field. He thinks that it's possible that homosexuality in men and women will turn out to have very different explanations, though he doesn't elaborate. Studies thus far have focused more on gay men, probably because such individuals are so clearly giving up their procreative possibilities. Gay women, in contrast, can and do have children, and in historical times they were frequently forced into marriage and childbirth, thus imparting their genes to the next generation just as straight women did.
I don't have an answer to the question, but I'm surprised Buss didn't delve into more parallels to animal studies, as he does with every other issue about human sexuality. I don't think
mentor/pupil, or
nice-guy, or
kin altruism theories do much to explain gay penguins, or rats, or monkeys, or any of the many animals homosexuality has been documented in. Seems pretty likely to me that there are some misfiring genes crossing the sexual attraction wires, somewhere. Buss mentioned an idea that seems parallel to me; the issue about why men have nipples and women have orgasms. Some traits, behaviors, and features aren't necessary or beneficial to one gender, but they keep turning up since our genetic structures are so twisted and prone to malfunction.
The analogy I've heard is between our genes and computer software. No living things on this planet have new, clean programming. We're all v1.27, or more like v941.37691. Give or take a few decimal points. Humans are 99% chimps, but we're also 92% whales, 89% rats, and 67% fig trees. I made up the figures past chimps, but those are ballpark correct. We evolved from earlier creatures, who evolved from earlier ones, and back and back and back. We're just updated versions, with much of the same old code, and somewhere, deep deep down in the early versions, is a switch that triggers male => female, and female => male. It's too important a function to risk being lost or rewritten, so like male nipples and female orgasms, it persists, and sometimes it misfires?
Are Men Really More Interested in Casual Sex? Yes. Next section.
"A recent study of 281,064 college students at 421 different universities asked if they agreed/disagreed with a statement: 'If two people really like each other, it's alright for them to have sex even if they've known each other only for a very short time.'" 55.2% of men said yes, but only 31.7% of women agreed. First of all, I call shenanigans. Of those 44.8% of men who said no... most had to be trying to impress girls, or God. Given that actual scenario in their own lives... hell yeah they'd be all up in her. On the other hand, women are given that actual scenario, on almost a daily basis. And most of them do indeed decline the sex.
This section cites a bunch more studies and surveys, but they all prove what we knew already. Men, of every age, from every culture, and in every class, are considerably more likely to engage in sex without deep emotional involvement than comparable women. The differences grow less pronounced with greater age, but they still exist.
There are some less self-evident tidbits here and there. When giving their reasons for short-term mating, around 44% of women say it's to "increase the probability of long-term commitment." Only 9% of men give that reason. The anecdotes from women say they hoped it would lead to more, or they believe it when men say they love them, etc.
On the other hand, Buss brings up the old statistically impossibility; men of every age group reporting far more sexual partners than women. Some have suggested that this is caused by the under representation of prostitutes in these studies; women who average hundreds of partners a year. A study in 2000 in Chicago found an average of 694 partners a year for the sample group of whores, and that's enough to average out an awful lot of those "men report 20, women report 8" sexual partner surveys. Buss also points out that there's some wishful thinking and delusion on those self-reported "# of sexual partner" surveys. Women wish they'd had fewer and men wish they'd had more, so they fudge in the direction of their better judgment.
Can Men and Women Be "Just Friends?" Well, half of us can be. The half without a penis, and the assorted biological imperatives (covered in chapter three of this book), to attempt to impregnate any halfway accommodating female. Buss has figures galore from recent studies carried out by evolutionary psychologist April Bleske, and I'll quote a few.
When it comes to male/female friendships:
- Men are twice as likely as women to positively "evaluate the potential for sexual access" to their friend.
- Men are twice as likely as women to be sexually-attracted to their friend.
- Men expressed twice as strong a desire to have sex with their friend.
Best of all, when Bleske sorted the results by single vs. LTR respondents, the results were unchanged. Even married men were twice as likely to want to fuck their female friends as single women were to fuck male friends. As you'd expect, the individuals in these "friendships" were delusional about what their opposites wanted. Men though the women were at least considering sex, when it wasn't even on the radar for those women. Women thought the men were somewhat or not very interested in them, when the men were highly interested.
Men and women each gain from opposite sex friendships, but the individuals in those relationships need to be aware that there's quite likely a subcurrent of him wanting what we'll politely call "romance." Sometimes these desires are consummated; of the study group cited above, 20% had had sex with a friend, but FWBs aren't that common; certainly not as common as most men wish they were. (Also note that figure is not 20% of women have sex with their guy friends. So the solution, guys, isn't to have 5 female friends and count on the odds. The figure means that of the women in the survey, 20% at one point in their lives had sex with a guy friend. If each woman had 10 guy friends each, that's 1 guy out of 50 who scored the all access pass. So women do have sex with friends, but very, very rarely.
This topic ties into something I've long pondered; the differences in interest, desire, and what happens to make women want sex. For most men, any woman of reasonable attractiveness and a friendly disposition is a likely prospect for a sexual partner, and/or a girlfriend. Not that it works out that way, but the guy is thinking he wouldn't mind if it did. Personally, I've never had a female friend I didn't at least consider a sexual relationship with, even if it wasn't anywhere near a burning desire, or something I tried to work towards. It's just how the male mind works, as much of this book is dedicated to demonstrating. There's a difference between friendship and sex, but men don't have a problem blurring the lines, or erasing them, or overlapping them. At least conceptually.
Women don't see it that way. Women can completely compartmentalize their friendship from their sex drive, much the way men compartmentalize sex and love. In fact, that separation between friends/lovers seems to be pretty much the default setting, for females. They have guy friends, and sometimes they might think about sexual issues or attraction with that guy, but they dismiss the thoughts as irrelevant, or unpleasant. The guy friend is just a guy friend, and it's a surprise to the woman if he's thinking about her as anything other than a platonic friend.
I've seen this in person quite a few times recently. My IG has a bunch of guy friends, myself included. As I've said in the past, she's cute and young and friendly, so gets a lot of male attention. Usually to her pleasure, sometimes to her annoyance. For example, there were several other guys in the class we met in who tried their luck at courting her, and while she and I hit it off pretty quickly and were soon spending time together chatting after class, she was still polite to the other guys. So when they'd email her, or call her cell phone, or ask her to movies or concerts or other such events, she wouldn't really say yes, but she didn't outright say no, and they therefore kept after her. She ended up going to a movie, a punk concert, and a lunch with 3 guys she really didn't want to spend time with, and on all 3 occasions asked me why this kept happening to her. Why were guys always after her and asking to spend time with her? Didn't they have other friends to hang out with?
The answer, of course, was that yeah, they had friends, but not young cute female friends they wanted to have sex with. It was almost a
Little Annie Fannie scenario, minus the overt sexuality, since every time the IG and I would talk she'd ask me why Gregg, or Peter (names changed to protect the guilty) kept asking her to lunch, or kept sending her weird emails, or calling her and then not seeming to have anything to say. "Because they want to have sex with you/make you their girlfriend." I'd tell her, and she'd frown. "But we're just friends. I've never flirted with them or given them any indication I'm interested in them that way." At that point I had yet to find this book, so I didn't have pseudo-scientific facts to give her, but I made it pretty clear that while she might not see them that way, they definitely saw her that way, and it was motivating enough to keep them trying to win her over, pathetic and misguided though their efforts were.
For instance, eventually Gregg got her to go on a lunch date, which the IG thought was entirely just friendship/curiosity. To no man's surprise, he leaned in for an attempted kiss while she was killing time looking at discount cosmetics at a drug store, forcing her to dodge/spin away. Later, when they got back to their cars and were saying goodbye, he managed to corral her against a bench and gave her an apparently-rehearsed speech about how he thought they really had something in common and how they belonged together.
She begged off as politely as she could, said she'd talk to him later, and ran for her life. Ten minutes later she called me, laughing so hard she could hardly talk, and she'd had to pull over to the side of the road to get her breath. She told me the story, taking fifteen minutes to gasp it out since she kept dissolving into giggles, and when next we met she insisted upon recreating her dodging, ducking, twisting kiss-escape maneuver. She was quite proud of it, actually. I liked it too; very Kali-esque, in the sinuous avoidance, though Gregg would have also gotten some portion of an elbow or fist blocking his lips, if the IG had some martial arts training
And yeah, it was funny, but it certainly goes to demonstrate the point the book makes here. It really does more than that, since the guy in this instance was not, by any definition of the term, her friend. He was a guy she'd spoken to briefly one of her college classes, and traded a few polite, non-personal emails with. He knew almost nothing about her, they had very little in common, their age difference was even larger than hers and mine... he didn't even have her phone number! They'd communicated only through email, had one awkward, unpalatable lunch date at a neutral location, she'd dodged his attempt at a kiss, and he'd still gone ahead and all but proposed to her ten minutes later. If this doesn't give you ladies an idea how far gone men can get in their idealized fantasies about you, sexually and otherwise, I don't know what will.
Before I return to the book, I want to circle back to my earlier question; my wonderment at how different is the urge to turn a relationship sexual. As I said, I, and most men, (Gregg, certainly) are willing and usually pretty eager to move any friendship (even an acquaintance-ship) to a more "intimate" level. Women, for the most part, are not. Why? What's the difference? Why do men see sex as an end, or something fun that could be added to a relationship, while women see the relationship, even a very close friendship, as entirely separate from sex? This book has covered that in some detail -- from an evolutionary standpoint men want to spread their seed, while women select potential mates more carefully since mating is a huge investment. These biological behaviors hold true today, even when women aren't looking to settle down, and men are not looking to get a casual date pregnant.
This is just one of those things biology makes it impossible for us to understand in the other gender. Women don't understand why men are so casual about sex and so constantly interested in it, and men don't understand how women can not be thinking about sex with any guy they enjoy spending time with. I sometimes wonder if availability is tied in somehow. Most people like ice cream and candy, but people who work in factories or stores selling them are nauseated by the stuff, simply because they're around it all the time and can eat as much as they want. So, are men so interested in sex since such a small % of the women they meet are available for it? And are women disinterested in sex since most women could have sex with a large % of the men they see, if they so desired?
I think not. Eligible men, especially of the rich/young/single type; rock stars, athletes, actors, etc, can have sex with a ridiculous amount of women, and they usually do. They might get sick of it and want to settle down eventually, but they'll still think about sex all the time; they'll just develop some control and selectiveness. Women aren't like that. They could have sex all the time, but they don't, and they don't want to. Furthermore, and this takes them far beyond the level of an exhausted rock star, they don't think about sex, or realize that men are. The whole concept of "availability" is entirely different. Generally speaking, women don't consider some random guy at a supermarket, or gas station, or public library, as a potential sex partner. It just doesn’t enter their minds the way it does for almost every man.
The thing that confuses me though, is what's the difference between a guy a woman trusts and likes and wants to confide in, and a guy a woman trusts and likes and wants to have sex with? It's not purely based on physical attraction, or personality, or merit, or wealth, or how long she's known him. Women aren't robots; there's no exact combination of factors that = sexual readiness. Human beings are odd, our psychology is odder, and the "chemistry" between two people can't be quantified. But it's puzzling to a man when women make their decisions on such intangibles, and they seem to defy logic. (Not that men are any more logical, but perhaps we're more consistently illogical?)
Every woman I've talked to about her past romances (whether we were in a romance ourselves or not) has felt regret about most of them. She didn't really like the guy, he was a lousy lover, he cheated on her, he wasn't kind or caring or compassionate, etc. Meanwhile, they've known other guys (sometimes including myself) who they did like, did enjoy spending time with, did trust, but who they never considered having sex with, to the point that they were sure the guy hadn't been interested in them that way, and/or were shocked when that guy expressed his romantic interest.
I guess the male confusion boils down to, "Why him, but not me?" and there's no answer to that. At least no answer that can be expressed in any logical terms.
The woman might reply. "Why chocolate instead of vanilla? Or strawberry? Or almond double fudge crunch?"
To which the guy, still confused, would say, "But why not all of them? I thought you liked ice cream?"
I think I need a female co-writer on this one. It's just getting longer and longer without coming to any conclusion. Back to the book.
Friends as Rivals. This section covers mate poaching in same-sex friendships. I.e., two guys are friends, and one of them steals the other's wife. Or at least secretly bangs her behind his back when they break up for a weekend. According to studies, this sort of thing is quite common, in every combination of genders and friendships, and is almost always practiced in secret and deception. Women are apparently far more aware of this issue than men, often reacting suspiciously when their female friends show any personal interest in their man. Especially if that female friend is newly-single.
The Specter of Mate Poaching. Finding a good mate is hard. Beautiful people move from one relationship to another; people who have a desirable mate hold onto him/her, and for single people on the outside looking in, it can seem like everyone good is taken already. One solution? Try to take the taken.
Buss cites his own survey, in which 60% of men and 53% of women admitted to having attempted to lure someone out of a relationship. About half of these attempts succeeded. Most people in a relationship say they've had the same problem; someone tried to lure them out; 93% of men and 82% of women said someone had pulled on them for an LTR, and 87% of men and 94% of women said they'd been offered a brief encounter. Maybe the survey corrected for this, but Buss doesn't list his methodology, so I've got to wonder. Given how many places he's cited the delusions men and women are under about sexual interest, how accurate are these figures? Women apparently don't know when men are hitting on them, and men mistake any female politeness for sexual interest. So are the actual figures more like 100% of women have had someone try to lure them, of which 20% didn't realize it? On the other hand, maybe only about 18% of men have had a woman actually try to lure them away, while the other 75% of men imagined that their neighbor mouthed the word "blowjob," when she waved while out walking her dog last week?
That issue aside, Buss points out that friends are uniquely well-positioned for mate poaching. They already know the partner, they can be around socially and ingratiate themselves, they may become a confidant in times of discord, they know the schedule of their rival, can easily arrange to be around more often when he or she is out of town, or at work, etc.
Defending Against Sexual Treachery--Jealousy and Mate Guarding. Fortunately for those of us who would like to be in and stay in a relationship, mate poaching has gone on forever, and counter measures have been developed. Jealousy and possessiveness, already covered in earlier chapters, are the main defenses.
There's some interesting insight into human nature in this section though. It seems that men and women are more perceptive about what their mates are most interested in than we might expect. As expected and covered previously, women are more concerned by their man developing an emotional relationship, while men are more upset by sexual infidelity. However, when men were asked to rank a long list of characteristics a rival might possess, they were most worried about other men who had better financial prospects, job prospects, and physical strength. Women were most worried about a woman who had a more attractive face, or a more desirable body. Okay, the physical strength one is kind of an outlier, since nothing in the book has indicated that women especially care about that, but the other traits are all dead on, in terms of what the genders are most likely to base their next mate selection on.
Do Men Have Adaptations to Rape? Rape exists in all cultures, to a greater or lesser extent. It exists in animals too; a long paragraph talks about odd, half-sized, arrested-development orangutans who nevertheless have fully-mature sexual organs. One researcher observed 151 copulations by such males, of which 144 were forced, with the female screaming, fighting back, and attempting to bite, all behaviors never exhibited when mating with full sized, dominant males.
Scholarly study of rape in humans is not common, and received a big boost in the year 2000, when biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig Palmer published
A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, a book that was instantly engulfed in controversy and bitterness, much of it directed towards the authors. I'll get to that in a minute, but first for the book. In it Thornhill-Palmer put forward two theories in an effort to explain some of the motivation and history of rape in evolutionary terms. 1) Rape is an evolved male adaptation as a reproductive strategy, or 2) rape is a by-product of other evolved mannerisms, such as a desire for sexual variety, or low-cost casual sex.
Points for each thesis are presented, but since this issue was covered thoroughly
in chapter seven, I'm going to refrain from repeating it here.
Buss repeats the info about rape victims being almost entirely young and attractive females, and rape perpetrators being chiefly promiscuous men from lower economic classes. He's got some new figures about male physical responses to rape, that I found amazing. The earlier chapter discussed the fact that men ejaculate far more sperm when they make love to their partners after some time away, regardless of the frequency of their orgasms; a seeming adaptation to improve the odds of fertilization. Rape victims seem to receive the same gift: pregnancy rates of victims of penile-vaginal rape are extraordinarily high -- 6.42%, vs. 3.1% from consensual sex, per incident.
It's unclear why this is; there are some issues with selection bias; since rapists are overwhelmingly targeting fertile young women, but even controlling for that, rape victims become pregnant at a higher rate than women engaging in consensual sex. One possibility is more selection bias; as the book puts it, "men who court women using normal mating strategies are at the mercy of discriminating females, whereas rapists are not... thus rapists might choose women who, in addition to being young, are especially physically-attractive. Since attractive women are more fecund this might explain the unusually high rape-pregnancy rate."
I was thrown for a moment on that one; attractive women are more fecund? Then I was like, "Oh yeah. That's only the whole point of the book; that men select attractive women since their attractiveness is an outward sign of their fertility."
Buss concludes that there's way too little evidence to make any conclusions about rape, and the reason there's so little evidence is because the issue is so controversial that it's very difficult to research it. He says the book by Thornhill-Palmer has been "castigated, denounced, and ridiculed more than any other book n the recent history of science." I of course had to go look it up after that recommendation. There's a
brief and uncontroversial overview of the book on Wikipedia, but better coverage can be found on Amazon. The book has a couple of semi-critical editorial reviews, and a battleground of reader reviews. Of the 64 reviews now posted, 25 are 5-star and 33 are 1-star. Lovely polarization there. I hope to receive reviews of that nature for my work, someday. I'd rather be loved and hated than indifferent'ed.
The main
textual criticisms are that the authors cherry-picked their study results, and advanced some other conclusions on very flimsy evidence. For instance, their contention, repeated by Buss in
The Evolution of Desire, that women of child-bearing years experience more trauma after a rape than older or younger women, is apparently very thinly-sourced, and extrapolated from one limited study over 30 years ago. Since this point is one of the key arguments for an evolutionary, reproductive aversion to rape on the part of women, it's fairly important if the data is valid or not.
Skimming over the 1-star reviews, looking for some juicy quotage, I'm disappointed. You can find more fiery condemnation in Harry Potter reviews than for this book. Quite a few of the 1-starrers are civil and lucid, and quite a few others obviously haven't read the book and are just parroting arguments they heard elsewhere: the authors just want publicity, the book will give men an excuse/justification to rape, it's pseudo-science, etc. There's a lot of ignorance of the whole concept of evolutionary biology/psychology too, but that's not surprising. Many angry people harp on the issue of child rape, or point out that most rape doesn't result in a baby being born. The first is horrible, and the second is true, but neither relates to the subject at hand.
The evolutionary argument isn't that an individual act of rape is an attempt by a man to reproduce; the argument is that over the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution on this planet, rape has been a successful reproductive strategy often enough to encode a proclivity for it into male genes. Saying that an individual man's act of rape didn't result in a child answers that argument about as well as a creationist saying that evolution isn't true since the monkeys in the zoo aren't turning into people: it's irrelevant to the argument and only displays your ignorance of the issue.
To extend the analogy: humans enjoy and pursue sexual intercourse just as avidly even when they know birth control will thwart the natural outcome of the act. Some humans enjoy masturbation, or oral sex, or homosexual activities just as much, if not more, than other humans enjoy male/female intercourse. Why? Because their bodies, driven by eons of evolution, don't know or care that their particular acts of rutting won't produce offspring. Plus there's individual psychological preference too. Now obviously there's a surface level of sexual desire, or if we return to rape and the classic feminist arguments, there's a lot of anger by men, issues of control, and all the other classic "rape is an act of violence" stuff. Nothing in the "rape is an evolutionary adaptation" theory denies that; it just tries to find a deeper root cause upon which cultural baggage is piled.
I'm not sold on the evolutionary thesis, and the critiques of the research are pretty telling (and make me view Buss' book in a less confident light, since he's enthusiastically and unquestioningly passing them along) but it's a theory that I think deserves consideration. Which is not to say I think any act of rape is justified or excused. Or that I'd stop short of murdering, or at least lingeringly-castrating, any man who committed such a crime against a woman I loved. But then, I've already been in arguments
over my enthusiastic approval of violent acts of vengeance.
The rest of chapter 12 includes a lot more discussion of possible rape motivations and defenses, but I've digressed on the subject enough already. There's also coverage of "Cognitive biases in sexual mind-reading" which sounds interesting but boils down to "men think women want sex when they don't." and we've heard that one 500x already in this book. Buss concludes things with a short section on the centrality of mating in social life. I'll quote his last paragraph, just to wrap things up.
No social relationship remains untouched by mating. Men misread women's smiles in the service of sexual exploitation. Women remain skeptical of men's commitment signals to avoid sexual victimization. Fathers guard their daughters to influence mate choice, and daughters manipulate their fathers to mate with the men they love. Both sexes deploy deceptive signals. Men and women experience great difficulty being "just friends." Same-sex allies sometimes turn into Trojan horses. Mate poachers lurk behind smiling faces. Sometimes, thankfully, we find lifelong love. As individuals, mating permeates much of what we do. As a species, it defines who we are.
This was far from a perfect book, but it had a tremendous amount of grist for my intellectual mill, as these almost never-ending reviews and discussions testify. If you've read them all, congrats and I hope you learned something, or at least found some interest and entertainment in them. I got horribly carried away with the discussion and recapping, but much of it fascinates me, and I was writing these notes for myself as much as my blog readers. That hardly explains my multi-page digressions in each chapter, or the fact that I cover the boring chapters in as much detail as the fascinating ones, but this is what 3 very intensive semesters of college did to me; provided me with a semi-useless degree, and got me attuned to reading, analyzing, and discoursing. At length. Plus I couldn't go off on tangents and personal opinions like this in my school papers, so I enjoyed doing so here.
I don't know how long all of these entries together are, but just this one is about 18 pages at the standard double-spaced, 12 point, TNR, 1" margins. And I wrote 8 or 9 other entries that weren't a great deal shorter. Pity I didn't put half this much effort into editing my fantasy novel over the past 3 weeks, eh?
Labels: the evolution of desire
