The Evolution of Desire Fact or Fiction

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The Evolution of DesireFact or Fiction?

• Zeina Naim
• Nicole Perkins

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The cliché

• Men are naturally more promiscuous than women,
  because they have a natural desire to spread
  their seeds
• The femalewith the rarest exception, is less
  eager than the maleshe is coy, and may often be
  seen endeavouring for a long time to escape from
  the male. (Darwin, as cited by Wright,
  1994, p17)

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Outline

• Evolutionary argument for mens evolved
  mechanisms for mating
• Evolutionary argument for womens evolved
  mechanisms for mating
• Problems with Evolutionary explanation of sexual
  behaviour
• Can Evolution explain all?

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Spreading the seed

• Behavioural
• Number of partners

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• being the mayor of a small town filled with nude
  girls from 20 to 24. I like to take walks, and
  pick out the best-looking one that day, and she
  engages in intercourse with me. All the women
  have sex with me any time I want.
• (Buss, 2003, p82)

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Spreading the seed

• Behavioural
• Number of partners
• Novelty

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• You dont want to eat the same vegetable every
  day.
• (Buss, 2003, p81)

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Spreading the seed

• Behaviour
• Number of partners
• Novelty
• Time
• Standards

• Physiology
• Sperm count
• Attractiveness

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Do the differences really exist?

• It doesnt add up
• Social Pressure on Self-Report

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Do the differences really exist?

• It doesnt add up
• Social Pressure on Self-Report
• Female Chimps and Monkeys

• Sperm Competition
• Testicle size
• So are women just as promiscuous?

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Selecting the seed

• The Promiscuous Woman
• Behaviour
• Adultery From Birds to Humans
• Physiology
• orgasm
• menstrual cycle

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• Strive to acquire a provider husband who will
  invest food and care in your children strive to
  find a lover who can give those children
  first-class genes. It began with a woman who
  married the best unmarried hunter in the tribe
  and had an affair with the best married hunter,
  thus ensuring her children a rich supply of meat.
  Men are to be exploited as providers of parental
  care, wealth, and genes.
• (Ridley, 1993, p236)

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Problems with the Evolutionary explanation

• Darwinian Storytelling
• Same observation, different explanation
• Lack of hard evidence
• Behaviour assumed to be genetic
• Hunter-gatherer assumption

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Problems with the Evolutionary explanation

• Rhetoric and Naturalisation
• a lapse in scrutiny by the womans regular mate
  a temporary failure of the man to guard
  her. (Buss, 2003, p73)

• The egg
• transported, swept, drifts
• Sperm
• whiplashlike, strong lurches, burrow,
  penetrate

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Can Evolution explain all?

• Undeniable sex differences
• Are we ruled solely by our biology?
• Social role theory
• Which came first - the behaviour or the
  stereotypes?
• Society/culture/religion sets moral boundaries to
  our behaviour
• Can moral judgements be independent from genes?

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Further questions...

• Are we at the mercy of our biology?
• If there were no social/religious/moral
  boundaries, how would we behave?

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References - 1

• Alexander, M. G. Fisher, T. D. (2003). Truth
  and consequences using the bogus pipeline to
  examine sex differences in self-reported
  sexuality. The Journal of Sex Research, 40 (1),
  27-35
• Buss, D. M. (1992). Mate preference mechanisms
  consequences for partner choice and intresexual
  competition. In Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L.
  Tooby, J. (Eds). The adapted mind evolutionary
  psychology and the generation of culture. New
  York Oxford University Press
• Buss, D. M. (2003). The evolution of desire
  strategies of human mating. New York Basic Books
• Cosmides, L. Tooby, J. (1997). Evolutionary
  psychology a primer. WWW http//www.psych.
• ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html (16/02/04)

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References - 2

• Haste, H. (1993). The sexual metaphor. Cambridge,
  MA Harvard University Press
• Orr, H. A. 2003.  Darwinian storytelling (review
  of Steven Pinker's The Blank  Slatethe Modern
  Denial of Human Nature). The New York Review of
  Books, February 27, 2003, pp. 17-20
• Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate the modern
  denial of human nature. London Penguin
• Ridley, M. (1993). The red queen sex and the
  evolution of human nature. London Penguin Books
• Sperm Wars, BBC2, February 2004
• Wright, R. (1994). The moral animal why we are
  the way we are. St Ives Abacus