Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (9 page)

The sheer volume of evidence amassed to convince us that women are not particularly sexual beings is quite impressive.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of studies have claimed to confirm the flaccidity of the female libido. One of the most cited studies in all of evolutionary psychology, published by 1989, is typical of the genre.9 An attractive undergraduate student volunteer walked up to an unsuspecting student of the opposite sex (who was alone) on the campus of Florida State University and said, “Hi, I’ve been noticing you around town lately, and I find you very attractive. Would you go to bed with me tonight?” About 75 percent of the young men said yes. Many of those who didn’t asked for a “rain check.” But
not one
of the women approached by these attractive strangers accepted the offer. Case closed.

Seriously, this study
really is
one of the best known in all of EP. Researchers reference it to establish that women aren’t interested in casual sex, which is important if your theory posits that women instinctively barter sex to get things from men. After all, if they’re giving it away for free, the bottom falls out of the market, and other women are going to have a harder time exchanging sex for anything of value.

Male Parental Investment (MPI)

As mentioned above, underlying each of these theories, as well as evolutionary theory in general, is the notion that life can be conceptualized in terms of economics and game theory. The objective of the game is to send your genetic code into the future by producing the maximum possible number of offspring who survive and reproduce. Whether or not this dispersal leads to happiness is irrelevant. In his best-selling survey of EP,
The Moral Animal,
Robert Wright puts it succinctly, saying: “We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. (Of course, we’re designed to pursue happiness; and the attainment of Darwinian goals—sex, status, and so on—often brings happiness, at least for a while.) Still, the frequent absence of happiness is what keeps us pursuing it, and thus makes us productive.”10

This is a curious notion of productivity—at once overtly political and yet presented innocently enough, as if there were only one possible meaning of “productivity.” This perspective on life incorporates the Protestant work ethic (that

“productivity” is what makes an animal “effective”) and echoes the
Old Testament
notion that life must be endured, not enjoyed. These assumptions are embedded throughout the literature

of

evolutionary

psychology.

Ethologist/

primatologist Frans de Waal, one of the more open-minded philosophers

of

human

nature,

calls

this

Calvinist

sociobiology.

The female interest in quality over quantity is thought to be important in two respects. First, she would clearly be interested in conceiving a child with a healthy man, so as to maximize the odds that her child would survive and prosper.

“Women’s reproductive resources are precious and finite, and ancestral women did not squander them on just any random man,” writes evolutionary psychologist David Buss.

“Obviously, women don’t consciously think that sperm are cheap and eggs are expensive,” Buss continues, “but women in the past who failed to exercise acumen before consenting to sex were left in the evolutionary dust; our ancestral mothers used emotional wisdom to screen out losers.”11 Buss doesn’t explain why there are still so many “losers” in the gene pool today if their ancestors were subject to such careful screening for thousands of generations.

While a substantial amount of female parental investment is biologically unavoidable in our species, evolutionary theorists believe that
Homo sapiens
is uniquely high in
male parental
investment
(MPI) among primates. They argue that our high level of MPI forms the basis for the supposed universality of marriage. As Wright puts it, “In every human culture in the anthropological record, marriage … is the norm, and the family is the atom of social organization. Fathers everywhere feel love for their children…. This love leads fathers to help feed and defend their children, and teach them useful things.”12

Biologist Tim Birkhead agrees, writing, “The issue of paternity is at the core of much of men’s behaviour—and for good evolutionary reasons. In our primeval past, men who invested in children which were not their own would, on average, have left fewer descendents than those who reared only their own genetic offspring. As a consequence men were, and continue to be, preoccupied with paternity….”13

For now, we’ll briefly note a few of the questionable assumptions underlying this argument:

•
Every
culture is organized around marriage and the nuclear family.

• Human fathers that provided for
only
their own children would have left far more descendants than those less selective in their material generosity.

•
Note how this presumes a discrete genetic basis for
something as amorphous as “preoccupation with paternity.”

• In the ancestral environment, a man could know which children were biologically his, which presumes that:

•
he understands that one sex act can lead to a child, and

•
he has 100 percent certainty of his partner’s fidelity.

• A hunter could refuse to share his catch with other hungry people living in the close-knit band of foragers (including nieces, nephews, and children of lifelong friends) without being shamed, shunned, and banished from the community.

So, according to the standard narrative, as male parental investment translates into advantages for that man’s children (more food, protection, and education—other kids be damned), women would have evolved to choose mates with access to more of these resources and whose behavior indicated that they would share these resources only with her and her children (indications of selective generosity, fidelity, and sincerity).

But, according to this narrative, these two female objectives (good genes and access to a male’s resources) create conflictive situations for men and women—both within their relationship and with their same-sex competitors. Wright summarizes this understanding of the situation: “High male parental investment makes sexual selection work in two directions at once. Not only have males evolved to compete for scarce female eggs; females have evolved to compete for scarce male investment.”14

“Mixed

Strategies”

in

the

War

Between the Sexes

It’s no accident that the man who famously observed that power is the greatest aphrodisiac was not, by a long shot, good-looking.15 Often (in what we might call the
Kissinger
effect),
the men with the greatest access to resources and status lack the genetic wealth signified by physical attractiveness. What’s a girl to do?

Conventional theory suggests she’ll marry a nice, rich, predictable, sincere guy likely to pay the mortgage, change the diapers, and take out the trash—but then cheat on him with wild, sexy, dangerous dudes, especially around the time she’s ovulating, so she’s more likely to have lover-boy’s baby. Known as the
mixed strategy
in the scientific literature, both males and females are said to employ their own version of the dark strategy in keeping with their opposed objectives in mating (females maximizing quality of mates and males maximizing quantity of mating opportunities). It’s a jungle out there.

The best-known studies purporting to demonstrate the nature of these two differing strategies are those done by David Buss and his colleagues. Their hypothesis holds that if males and females have conflicting agendas concerning mating behavior, the differences should appear in the ways males and females experience sexual jealousy. These researchers found that women were consistently more upset by thoughts of their mates’
emotional
infidelity, while men showed more anxiety concerning their mates’
sexual
infidelity, as the hypothesis predicts.

These results are often cited as confirmation of the male parental investment–based model. They appear to reflect the differing interests the model predicts. A woman, according to the theory, would be more upset about her partner’s emotional involvement with another woman, as that would threaten her vital interests more. According to the standard model, the worst-case scenario for a prehistoric woman in this evolutionary game would be to lose access to her man’s resources and support. If he limits himself to a meaningless sexual dalliance with another woman (in modern terms, preferably a woman of a lower social class or a prostitute—whom he would be unlikely to marry), this would be far less threatening to her standard of living and that of her children. However, if he were to fall in love with another woman and leave, the woman’s prospects (and those of her children) would plummet.

From the man’s perspective, as noted above, the worst-case scenario would be to spend his time and resources raising another man’s children (and propelling someone else’s genes into the future at the expense of his own). If his partner were to have an emotional connection with another man, but no sex, this genetic catastrophe couldn’t happen. But if she were to have sex with another man, even if no emotional intimacy were involved, he could find himself unknowingly losing his evolutionary

“investment.”

Hence,

the

narrative

predicts—and the research seems to confirm—that his jealousy should have evolved to control her
sexual
behavior (thus assuring paternity of the children), while her jealousy should be oriented toward controlling his
emotional
behavior (thus protecting her exclusive access to his resources).*

As you might guess, the
mixed strategy
referred to earlier would follow similar lines. The male’s mixed strategy would be to have a long-term mate, whose sexual behavior he could control—keeping her barefoot and pregnant if poor, foot-bound and pregnant if Chinese, or in high heels and pregnant if rich. Meanwhile he should continue having casual (low-investment) sex with as many other women as possible, to increase his chances of fathering more children. This is how standard evolutionary theory posits that men evolved to be dirty, lying bastards. According to the standard narrative, the evolved behavioral strategy for a man is to cheat on his pregnant wife while being insanely—even violently—jealous of her.

Charming.

Although the survival odds of any children resulting from his casual encounters would presumably be lower than those of the children he helps raise, this investment would still be wise for him, given the low costs he incurs (a few drinks and a room at the Shady Grove Motor Lodge—at the hourly rate).

The woman’s mixed strategy would be to extract a long-term commitment from the man who offers her the best access to resources, status, and protection, while still seeking the occasional fling with rugged dudes in leather jackets who offer genetic advantages her loving, but domesticated, mate lacks. It’s hard to decide who comes out looking worse.

Various studies have demonstrated that women are more likely to cheat on their husbands (to have extra-pair copulations, or EPCs) when they are ovulating and less likely to use birth control than they are when not fertile.

Furthermore, women are likely to wear more perfume and jewelry when ovulating than at other points in their menstrual cycle and to be attracted to more macho-looking men (those with physical markers of more vigorous genes). These conflicting agendas and the eternal struggle they appear to fuel—this “war between the sexes”—is central to the dismal vision of human sexual life featured in today’s scientific and therapeutic narratives.

As Wright summarizes, “Even with high MPI [male parental investment], and in some ways because of it, a basic underlying dynamic between men and women is
mutual
exploitation.
They seem, at times,
designed to make each
other miserable
[emphasis added].”16 Symons voices the same resignation in the first lines of
The Evolution of Human
Sexuality:

A central theme of this book is that, with respect to sexuality, there is a female human nature and a male human nature, and that these natures are extraordinarily different, though the differences are to some extent masked by the compromises heterosexual relations entail and by moral injunctions. Men and women differ in their sexual natures because throughout the immensely long hunting and gathering phase of human evolutionary history the sexual desires and dispositions that were adaptive for either sex were for the other tickets to reproductive oblivion.17

Bleak, no? Conventional evolutionary theory assures us that all you scheming, gold-digging women reading this are evolved to trick a trusting yet boring guy into marrying you, only to then spray on a bunch of perfume and run down to the local singles club to try to get pregnant by some unshaven Neanderthal as soon as hubby falls asleep on the couch. How could you? But before male readers start feeling superior, remember that according to the same narrative, you evolved to woo and marry some innocent young beauty with empty promises of undying love, fake Rolex prominent on your wrist, get her pregnant ASAP, then start “working late” with as many secretaries as you can manage. Nothing to be proud of, mister.

Extended Sexual Receptivity and

Concealed Ovulation

Unlike her closest primate cousins, the standard human female doesn’t come equipped with private parts that swell up to double their normal size and turn bright red when she is about to ovulate. In fact, a foundational premise of the standard narrative is that men have no way of knowing when a woman is fertile. As we’re supposed to be the smartest creatures around, it’s interesting that humans are thought to be almost unique in this ignorance. The vast majority of other female mammals advertise when they are fertile, and are decidedly not interested in sex at other times. Concealed ovulation is said to be a significant human exception. Among primates, the female capacity and willingness to have sex any time, any place is characteristic only of bonobos and humans.