Not Just Listening – “A Little Big-Dick Energy”

Not Just Listening – “A Little Big-Dick Energy”

by | Apr 26, 2022 | Dating & Mating Economy, Gender Politics, Relationship Issues, Sexuality

According to internet memes and posts by women, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the sexiest man of 2022. Why is that?

Comedian and television personality Bill Maher gives an explanation during the “new rules” segment of Real Time on March 25. (See link below.) Maher’s critique comports directly with evolutionary mate selection science as he laments the current zeitgeist between men and women in America. Maher notes the ever-increasing lack of passion for the American male and a general lack of sexual passion overall. (I have written about the “sexual deficit” in a prior post; see below.) Maher metaphorically suggests that sometimes women and the world (in tribal conflict) need “a little big-dick energy.”

Nailing It

As a companion piece for this discussion, also watch below the immensely popular satirical video It is Not About the Nail, which makes a reasonable assertion that women want a man who listens and validates – a man who does not jump immediately to “sending solutions.” This video also shows a silly caricature of a woman who refuses to acknowledge the obvious (a nail in her head) or accept a man for doing so.

Listening Is Not Sufficiently Sexy

Succeeding (“nailing it”) in this moment of female testing may be to just listen and resist trying to fix something – an interpretation often given by (especially female) relationship gurus. But as Maher astutely points out and mate selection science proves, women do not want a man who has no solutions and cannot fix anything. That man is not fuckable. Full stop. Men need to listen, validate, and be solid in silence, and yet ultimately, they better have solutions for problems in the real world. Perhaps it is a timing thing that emotionally intelligent men can navigate. But the interpersonal terrain for a man is clouded by this double bind. Those clouds portend possible thunderstorms for male-female understanding and his sanity.

Zelenskyy Has Redefined Manhood?

In her column, Kathleen Parker (Washington Post) addressed the Zelenskyy phenomenon, saying, “Zelenskyy has gone a long way toward redefining manhood. He is the modern-day warrior-artist — political and presidential, fearless and faithful, humble yet cocky. Zelenskyy is an everyman in his trademark T-shirt and half-zip, shouting to the world that he is not afraid. Art and war have been companions through the centuries, but it is rare to discover someone who combines the spirit of both disciplines.”

The Sweet Spot Plus Courage

Parker’s description succinctly captures the preferential sweet spot of female long-term mate selection strategy (see post below). Women seek this perfect blend of masculinity – a man with status, power, and capacity for provider-ship (like an “everyman” who happens to be the alpha male of an entire country) that is also loyal, generous, sincere, and most of all, courageous. This man will protect her at all costs. Courage is sexy for both sexes. But it is indispensable for men to win the hearts of women around the world.

Tension Between Two Mating Priorities

A woman’s long-term mating strategy needs “resources”* (the provision of status and power) and character – especially generosity and loyalty to her and their children. As women may readily tell their female friends, there is often a tension between these two dating/mating priorities. In America, resources usually win this game of mate selection preference, often with rationalization and denial about the lack of optimal character. Good providers and protectors get a more extended mate selection “interview” than “beta” men who are good listeners.**

With Zelenskyy, there is no need to rationalize. He is the sexist man in the world right now because he so obviously hits the sweet spot of these two preferences.

Zelenskyy Has Not Redefined Manhood – Many Came Before

Kathleen Parker is by no means the first to identify the “warrior-artist.” Years ago, Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max identified this man in their book Mate as the “tender-defender.” Stephen Marche in The Unmade Bed called him the “macho-caretaker.” Sex author and relationship expert Alana Pratt called him a “noble badass.” (Could there be a better description for Zelenskyy?)

Threading the Needle

One of the “needle-threading” double binds that men encounter is reflected by this mate selection request by women: “I want a ‘beast’ for protection — who is dangerous to others but not to me.” Author and couple’s psychotherapist, Esther Perel, is unequivocal on this subject. She calls this man the “tamed beast.”

Masculinity is Like Coffee

Maher said there may be a little but necessary “toxicity” in this sexier “Zelenskyy-man.” Maher uses the term “toxicity” for convenience, not as a psychological or sociological truth. But he says, “masculinity is like coffee; even when you decaffeinate it, there is still a little caffeine in there.” Maher’s overall point, which I generally embrace, is that we need to stop “decaffeinating” our men. Such men are not sexy, and they will not protect us.

Zelenskyy is the Heroic Masculine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a hero. He is not an example of toxic masculinity. He is an example of noble male energy. He is a man of action and clarity of purpose, undeterred by rival dictators (or anybody else).

The Way of the Superior Man

Over 25 years ago, David Deida named and described the virtues of the warrior-artist, the sexually and spiritually evolved man, in his seminal work, The Way of the Superior Man. He anticipated the powerful impact of Zelenskyy on women. Chapter 37 of his book is entitled She Wants the “Killer” In You. “Although your woman doesn’t want you to be a killer, she is turned on by your capacity to kill. She is turned off by your lack of this capacity. She does not want you to be a killer, but she does want to feel you are capable of facing death for her. And it is this capacity that makes you trustable as a man, both as a human warrior but also as a spiritual warrior.”

A Superior Man Will Die for You

A superior man, a Volodymyr Zelenskyy and all the Ukrainian men who stayed behind, will die to protect his woman (and his country), but he absolutely will not always do what she wants. Sometimes he will just take the nail out of her head.

Now Please Watch:
Related posts and/or pages:

 

*“Resources” equates to financial/material security and is, therefore, a direct proxy for physical protection.

**Physical attractiveness is heavily weighted in contemporary culture, but is influenced directly, in the female mind, by status, power, and to some degree, character. It is worth noting: Zelenskyy is not tall nor exceptionally handsome.

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Female Sexual Fluidity: Power of Context and the Future of Heterosexual Partnerships

Female Sexual Fluidity: Power of Context and the Future of Heterosexual Partnerships

by | Nov 10, 2021 | Biological Difference, Dating & Mating Economy, Gender Politics, Men's Issues, Relationship Issues, Sexuality, Women's Issues

 

 “Power comes to women who bring gay expectations to their heterosexual couplings.”

~ Jennifer Baumgardner

Mutually satisfying romance, love, and sexuality are teetering on the edge of failure in the modern heterosexual mating economy.  Women are turning away from men and toward other women.  Recognition and knowledge of female sexual fluidity may expand our understanding of human intimacy and improve the quality of heterosexual relationships, perhaps not a moment too soon.  Let me start with a prescription and challenge to men and women in response to this trend.  The rest of this post gives background and rationale for my “solutions,” focusing on nine formulations of context underlying female sexuality and fluidity.

What Can Be Done to Improve Heterosexual Partnerships       

  • Men (and women) need to learn much more about female sexual response, including sexual fluidity.  Men need to accept and be curious about female sexual fluidity for what it can teach them.
  • Men need to further develop the capacity for interpersonal intimacy and connected conversation. Creating that context is crucial for the future of heterosexual relationships.
  • Men need to learn how to “interpret” the individual needs of women and create a sex-positive context specific for that woman.
  • Women need to be patient with men as they learn and apply “gay expectations.”
  • Women need to prefer men with high emotional intelligence over men with greater resources, status, and power. Establishing this preference is a very tall order for women because it runs counter to evolutionary pressures in mate selection.  Female choice is always paramount.  Women shape male behavior by their criteria for sexual access.  The energetic and sexual charge between men and women must “diversify” (somehow) so that the alpha male does not always get the most desirable woman.
  • Men need to reclaim the traits of heroic masculinity while monitoring and reducing particular forms of dominance. Servant leadership is the model.  A man can be heroic without being “toxic.”  Disengaging from the need for status and power is also a tall order.  Male psychology has been shaped by hierarchy over thousands of years of mate selection in collusion with women.
  • Women can readily encourage positive masculinity (heroic masculinity) by respecting and verbally acknowledging men for acts of service and by pushing back against the thinking that (all/most) men are “the problem.”
  • Male sexuality should not be vilified as a malevolent force in nature but understood for its biological basis and evolutionary purpose.  Political feminists who disparage or discourage male sexuality must acknowledge the sexual complexities of women concerning desire, power, and erotic objectification.
  • American economic and social systems must allow average, working-class men to provide for their families and women to be supported in the workforce with a provision of care for their children.

Female Sexuality is Different from Male Sexuality

Women have their unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and vary more than men in anatomy, sexual response, sexual mechanisms, and how their bodies respond to the sexual world.  Women vary more widely from each other and change more substantially over their lifetime than do men.

 Women’s sexual functioning includes sexual attractions, romantic affections, sexual practices/behaviors, and preference/orientation identities that are different from men’s sexual functioning due to biological and cultural adaptations. 

Female sexuality is different from male sexuality in ways that affect all of us, all of the time.

What is Female Sexual Fluidity?

 According to researcher Lisa Diamond, the fundamental and defining feature of female sexual orientation is fluidity (Sexual Fluidity — Understanding Women’s Love and Desire). 

 Diamond defines sexual fluidity as “situation-dependent flexibility in women’s sexual responsiveness that makes it possible for some women to experience desires for either men or women under certain circumstances, regardless of their overall sexual orientation.”  Further clarifying is the definition of bisexuality by author Robyn Ochs (Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World):  “A bisexual person has the potential to be sexually and/or romantically attracted to more than one sex, but not necessarily at the same time or to the same extent.”

 Female Fluidity is Growing

Female sexual fluidity is on the rise.  There is an increase in the percentage of women who identify as lesbian or bisexual in practice.   Women are more likely to be “hetero-flexible” in their behavior than men, perhaps by a large margin.  Researchers believe this has always been true, but it is a growing behavioral and cultural trend.  Women are turning away from men for romance and connection; they prefer the company of women for a variety of socio-cultural reasons (e.g., response to memes of “toxic masculinity and the “me-too” movement).

A 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that 11 percent of women aged 15-44 reported having some form of sexual experience with women; women were also three times more likely than men to have had both male and female partners in the last year. (1)  

Liberal Generation Zs – An Increasingly Fluid Population

A recent Gallup poll found one in six (15.9%) Generation Z adults (ages 18-23) identified as LGBTQ.  LBGTQ identification is lower in each older generation, including 2% or fewer respondents born before 1965.  Young people who are politically liberal identified as LGBTQ at astronomical rates.  Gallup found nearly thirty-one percent (30.7) percent of Gen Z liberal adults identified as LGBTQ. In 2021, female bisexual behavior is so common, the concept of “orientation” fits women less than men.

Bisexual women reveal preference instead of orientation.

Female Sexual Fluidity Reveals the Power of Context

Female sexuality is more context-specific than male sexuality. All external circumstances of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, orgasm, choice of partner, and orientation identity. Diamond observed, “the more we learn about women’s desires, the more obvious it becomes that they involve complex interplays between biological, environmental, psychological, and interpersonal factors.” 

Formulations of Female Context

Related to fluidly and context, men and women are not the same sexual species.

Women’s sexual behavior and fluidity emerge out of several formulations of context.

1. Context of emotional connection

More than ever, women feel more emotionally connected to other women than to men. If this emotional trigger is strong enough, same-sex behavior as a preference can easily emerge.  “Straight” women genuinely fall in love with other women; straight men do not often (or ever) fall in love with men in the same way. 

Women Have More Interest in the Character Traits of Connection

Men and women have different preferences and priorities for traits desired in a mate.  While there is some agreement about preferring kindness, stability, humor, and care of children, women overall have much more interest in character traits that may bring interpersonal connection.  Preference for interpersonal connection powerfully drives interest in same-sex behavior.

2. Context of being empowered and politically progressive

As extensively detailed by Jennifer Baumgardner (Look Both Ways – Bisexual Politics), female same-sex sexuality often emerged out of a political context.  It provided a kind of virtue signaling – a badge of cultural wokeness.  Female sexual fluidity was politically in alignment with the movement of women to equalize power dynamics and disengage from men and “structures of patriarchy.”  Segments of the modern feminist movement have demonstrated strident but unexamined misandry.  It has turned many women away from men as a political statement.  Loving and being sexual with women becomes the correct political statement.  

“Gay Expectations” – Contexts 1 and 2 Combined

“There are two reasons to be drawn to women when you are a woman,” explains Baumgardner.  First, “being with a woman provides comfort.  She is like the first person you bonded with, the nurturer; through her, you get understanding.”  The second reason is political, she says, and forces this question:  “Can I have a more satisfying, more equal relationship in which I like myself better with a woman?”  Baumgardner answers this by saying, “I have yet to have a relationship with a man where I feel as strong and independent as I felt with the two serious female relationships I’ve had.”  

“Gay expectations” are essentially the best traits in the character cluster of a heterosexual woman’s long-term mating strategy. Baumgardner says “power comes to women who bring gay expectations to their heterosexual couplings.”  By “power” she means significant benefits of relationship satisfaction produced from asserting the need for a co-equal partnership with a man – a partnership where the woman also “brings” her criteria for emotional affinity.  (To be clear, Baumgardner is not talking about a woman’s erotic power in a heterosexual partnership; Baumgardner may not even acknowledge the privilege of female erotic power.)

3. Context of being hip, renegade, and more sexually interesting

Bisexual or hetero-flexible women may be seen as more interesting, adventurous, and sexual than straight women.  And, there is almost no downside for a woman to fall in love or want to have sex with a woman while continuing to attract men.  Men are often more turned on by the thought of a woman who also loves a woman.  Women who are sexual in a variety of ways are erotic for most men.

4. Context of belonging and community

“Membership” in the bisexual, “queer,” or lesbian community can often bring a powerful sense of belonging, especially for young adults.  In an episode of The Bisexual, a young woman turns to the lead (bisexual) female character and says in a sense of comradeship, “well, you know, I am queer.”  Our 30-something, experienced bisexual protagonist turns to her and says derisively, “well, everyone under 25 thinks they are queer.”

Belonging Is Intoxicating

Belonging is an intoxicating and essential human need.  For marginalized or minority communities of any kind, belonging to a subculture is salvation.  Sexually fluidity brings membership in a tribe that is counter to mainstream culture.  It is potentially a provocative and charismatic club.  Like a tattoo, it is an outward affectation that says, “I am adventurous; I am (paradoxically) unique and sexy.” 

Dissension Within the Fluid Community

It is also true that there are subcultures and dissention within the fluid community, queer umbrella.  Baumgardner details the struggles of bisexuals to be accepted within the lesbian community and the internal tensions about female sexuality within the feminist movement.

“Bi For Now”

We have witnessed popular terms such as “Lesbian until Graduation” (LUG) or “Bisexual until Graduation” (BUG) as sex researchers viewed college as a place where young women explore their sexuality and have their first and sometimes only lesbian relationship. 

In 2003, a New Yorker magazine article, “Bi for Now,” suggested that women’s involvement in their college’s gay scene exposed them to a different culture, like a junior year abroad in “Gay World.”  A large study (13,550 responses) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the prevalence of  “gay until graduation” may be overestimated compared to non-college women. Yet, they also found the gender gap on homosexuality remained substantial:  twice as many women as men reported same-sex behavior.

5. Context of men as undesirable and a liability

Men are perceived as less interesting and are less admired by women than ever before. 

Being attracted to only men may even be seen as a liability, a disability, or just provincial.   Women and the popular media often portray men as emotional and moral “children.”    Sometimes bisexual women have to defend or hide their interest in men to self-identified lesbians.

6. Context of safety and a “sex-positive” situation

Women’s sexual functioning is influenced by their internal brain state — how they experience the present moment and how they generally think and feel about sex. Judgment, shame, stress, mood, trust, body image, and past trauma influence a woman’s sexual well-being.  A woman’s brain must create a context that sees the world as a secure, pleasurable, and sexy place.  A sex-positive context for a woman is a moment with low stress, high affection, high trust, and is explicitly safe.

What a woman wants and enjoys will change with her external circumstances and internal state.  Women are often different from one another because a variety of contexts work to create female interest and readiness (female response variability).

7. Context of female competing intentions for erotic intimacy

Satisfaction in long-term relationships often requires balancing a polarity of human needs:  safety, familiarity, attachment, and security on one pole, and adventure, risk, mystery, and novelty on the other.   Bridging this polarity calls for a reconciliation between intimacy and caretaking (human bonding) and the sexual-erotic life, which often relies upon surprise and even distance. 

Human beings want and need both sides of this polarity in order to experience optimal happiness.   The need for familiarity and attachment may be a driver of same-sex behavior among women.  But the need for distance or difference also seems to enter the equation of women’s sexual fluidity, especially for hetero-flexible or bisexual women.  “One of the pleasures of the opposite sex is directly opposed to intimacy,” says Baumgardner.  “It is the fact of our mysteries to them and theirs to us that fires some of the relationship.”

Female Sexual Fluidity Deals With Trade-offs Between Character and Power

Bisexual women want emotional bonding with women, the equality of sameness – politically, physically, and emotionally.  Yet, as detailed by Baumgardner, bisexual women may also want the difference of a male body and the polarity of power experienced with a man – in a vaguely understood psychological soup of dominance and submission, subject and object.   Baumgardner explains: “There is more to life than being a sex object.  But the pleasure of being objectified – thought beautiful, sexy, special, and captivating – was drastically underplayed by feminists.”

“My sense of how hot and foxy a lover found me during sex had always been one of life’s greatest pleasures, and now I had trouble believing that this girl would or could objectify me.”  ~ Jennifer Baumgardner

Author and bisexual sex researcher Lisa Featherstone was asked by Baumgardner what she learned from dating men that she could bring to her sexual relationship with a woman.   “When I first started having sex with women, I remember thinking, I really like this, but I kind of want to be a little more attacked and objectified.”   Featherstone continued: “It sounds weird, but you have more freedom to express the range of your sexuality to a man or another bi woman (than to a lesbian).”

Unconscious Double-binds

Below the “surface” of conscious awareness in hetero-flexible or bisexual women are complex unconscious factors and double-binds related to dominance, submission, desire to be desired, desire to be safe, and the internal struggle between preferring alpha traits of dominance and beta traits of kindness loyalty, and commitment.  These are the same competing intentions of heterosexual women for long-term mating, amplified under the influence of modern feminism.

The “modern” woman must juggle her aspiration for personal power with her attraction to traditional forms of male power, embodied, not systemically, but in a particular man.  She must also navigate trade-offs in mate selection between the apparent “polarities” of power and character.  She wants both in different amounts at different times from the same person.

8. Context of supply and demand

One of the most potent “situations” in female heterosexuality is the workings of the overall mating economy – the impact of male spontaneous desire, initiation, and intrasexual competition.  Sex for most women is an abundant resource; it is not in short supply.  It is a need (within self-imposed selection preferences) that willing men can almost always meet. Therefore, there is no need to attend to it.  If the refrigerator is full, there is no need to fantasize or strategize about getting food.  If there is a man “pulling up” (like a bus) every 5 minutes, there is no need to worry about missing or choosing not to take the last bus. 

In the recent opening episode (Half the Money) of Paramount’s Yellowstone, hard-charging Beth Dutton gives a woman direct advice on why she should stand up to her husband:  “You have half the money and 100 percent of the pussy!”   Enough said; Beth Dutton (and the writers of Yellowstone) understand female erotic power and its demand in the mating economy.  This supply and demand dynamic is also salient for practicing bisexual women.

Supply and demand in the mating economy mostly encourages female sexual fluidity.

9. Context of physiological response, subjective desire, and sexual motivation.

As outlined in prior posts (see Appendix), female sexual fluidity is influenced by less testosterone and a weaker “sex drive” compared to men.  Women operate primarily from “response-desire” and an “inhibition-braking” system, whereas men operate from “spontaneous-desire” and an “accelerator-excitation” system.  Women also have very low “concordance” (agreement) between their subjective sexual desire and their physiological arousal compared to men.  All of these factors influence the complexity of female sexual fluidity and undergird all other contextual factors.

Feminism Must Reconcile Complexities of Female Sexual Fluidity and Response

Positions of feminism that disparage or discourage male sexuality must recognize and reconcile the sexual complexities of women concerning desire, power, and objectification.  Heterosexual feminist women sometimes disown the differences in male and female sexuality.  Yet, they may desire “alpha male sexuality” and collude with it when it suits them.  These complexities are also revealed in the multitudes of female sexual fluidity. 

Male Sexuality Should Not Be Uniformly Criticized

We are in an era where masculinity itself is often considered toxic, not just specific inappropriate behaviors.  The impact of the “me-too” movement is mainly a social good, but men are often lumped together as a singular class of predators.   Male sexuality should not be vilified as a malevolent force in nature but understood for its biological imperatives.  Men and male sexuality should not be criticized for “objectification” in many or most cases.  Men are hard-wired and hormonally constructed to look and want.  Bisexual and heteroflexible women (along with their heterosexual “sisters”) still “want to be wanted” and “erotically objectified” by men if the context is sex-positive.

The Drift Away from Men

Women are creating more distance from men, not less. 

The “drift away” from men appears to be an exercise in preference, not orientation.  Female sexual fluidity is emerging in a new context of romantic and sexual preference.  The bisexual behavior of women may be uncovering an inherent female bisexual orientation, and it could also be an expression of disenchantment with men and masculinity in general.  As the tee-shirt says, “the future is female.”

The Future of Male-Female Relationships

This “new” bisexuality and hetero-flexibility of women significantly influences the heterosexual mating marketplace –  a marketplace that already favors the erotic power of women to choose and the struggles of men to be chosen.  Studies have shown that female selectivity for mates is at an all-time high (except on college campuses with a surplus of women). Most men do not “make the grade” – they are not acceptable or attractive to women as mates.  Preferences for same-sex relationships squeeze men even further out of the mating economy.  Men often feel frustrated in their attempts to please women emotionally and sexually.  The future of male-female relationships and heterosexuality depends upon understanding the fluidity of female sexuality emerging in young women (young millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha).  Like climate change, we may already be behind the curve in understanding and adapting to it.

Why does this matter?

 Recognizing the sexual fluidity of women underscores the evolved behavioral sex differences between men and women.  Acknowledging differences between male and female sexuality is a necessary starting point for improving male-female sexual partnerships.  But the truth of evolved differences is often resisted by feminists.  Pockets of academia continue to cling to a “blank-slate,” standard social science model that overemphasizes culture (“proximate” causes) and underemphasizes evolutionary biology (“ultimate” causes).

 Cultural Forces Matter Going Forward

While accepting evolutionary biology and the tenets of mate selection science in the etiology of human sexuality, we must also acknowledge recent cultural forces that have increased female sexual fluidity.   The growing disrespect of male heterosexuality and the drift away from men as sexual partners is probably not healthy or sustainable long-term.  Solutions (“What can be done….?) must come through new knowledge and its application — perhaps a Sisyphean task considering ions of mate preference evolution and the rigidity of political-economic power structures, especially in the U.S.

Understanding Fluidity and Context Can Make Men Better Lovers

In conclusion, the understanding of female sexual fluidity and the formulations of female context can have an immediate positive impact on the quality of sexual relating for heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, and “queer” couple variations. (The effect on gay male couples is probably negligible.)  It can significantly help men better understand female physiology, arousal, and the power of context. 

Bottom line: understanding the power of context for female sexual fluidity can help men become better lovers for women.

Note
  1. Mosher, W. et al; Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, Advanced Data 2005; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Appendix

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Mate Value of High-Income Men: Seeking Arrangements and the Erotic-Economic Bargain

Mate Value of High-Income Men: Seeking Arrangements and the Erotic-Economic Bargain

by | Oct 12, 2021 | Dating & Mating Economy, Gender Politics, Relationship Issues, Sexuality

“You can lose a lot of money chasing women, but you will never loose women by chasing money.”
                    ~ Chris Rock — I Think I Love My Wife

Evolution and Behavior published (September 2021) a recent study by Rosemary Hopcroft 1 that confirms that high-income men have a higher value as long-term mates in the U.S.   The study’s conclusions are almost too obvious to report given years of data and research that have confirmed this fact of mate selection in America (and around the world), but like climate change, the benefits of Covid vaccines, and the integrity of the 2020 election result, some things bear repeating over and over until the impact is understood.

I will take this occasion to share the conclusions of this study and revisit related posts and pages on Mating Straight Talk (also see concluding Appendix.)  My intent (a return to basics) is similar to that of First Principle: Acknowledge Male-Female Differences, where I reviewed fundamental sex differences as a prologue to understanding the sexual fluidity of women.  In a couple of weeks, I will get back to that topic:  beginning a deep dive into the conditions, context, and politics (all proximate causes) of contemporary female sexuality.

Hopcroft Study

“High-income men have high value as long-term-mates in the U.S.: personal income and the probability of marriage, divorce, and childbearing in the U.S.”  Rosemary Hopcroft in Evolution and Human Behavior, 42 (2021) 409-417.

Study Abstract (abridged)

“Using data that includes complete measures of male biological fertility for a large-scale probability sample of the U.S. population (N=55,281), this study shows that high-income men2are more likely to marry, are less likely to divorce, if divorced are more likely to remarry, and are less likely to be childless than low-income men.

Study Conclusions

• Women Prioritize Earning Capability

Income is not associated with the probability of marriage for a woman and is positively related to divorce.  High-income women are less likely to remarry after divorce and more likely to be childless than low-income women.

These results are behavioral evidence that women are more likely than men to prioritize earning capabilities in a long-term mate and suggest that high-income men have high value as long-term mates in the U.S.”

• Higher-income Men in the U.S. and Scandinavia

Prior research in the U.S., Norway, Sweden, and Finland has shown that higher-income men have more biological children than lower-income men and higher-income women have fewer biological children compared to lower-income women.

• Men with Status in Pre-industrial Societies

Hopcroft says research findings in the U.S. and Scandinavia are relevant to studies in behavioral ecology and evolutionary demography that detail the relationship between status and reproductive success for men in pre-industrial societies.   “Status is positively related to reproductive success for men in pre-industrial societies, whether status is measured as land ownership, hunting ability, prestige, or wealth.”

• Evolutionary Psychology and Mate Preferences

According to Hopcroft, these research findings are also supported by the literature in evolutionary psychology regarding sex differences in mate preferences. The positive relationship between income and fertility is predicted by sexual strategies theory. “Financial prospects and status in a long-term mate are a higher priority for women than for men, according to mate preferences research.”  (Buss, 1989, 2016; Buss & Schmitt, 2019; Fales et al., 2016; Walter et al., 2020; Wang et al. 2018; Williams & Sulikowski, 2020.)

• Income and Wealth are Most Important in the U.S.

In most modern societies, status is measured by education, occupation, or household income.  Hopcroft reports that in the U.S., education does not have a robust correlation with income.  Income or wealth is the most crucial ingredient for reproductive decision-making in the U.S., while reproductive success is still associated with overall male status.

• Low-Income Men Are More Likely to Be Childless

Men’s income is positively associated with fertility because low-income men are more likely to be childless than high-income men.  “This is further supported,” Hopcroft says, “by evidence that low-income or unemployed men are less likely to be married and more likely to be divorced.”

• Watch What She Does — Not What She Says

Hopcroft cites the research of evolutionary psychologists Paul Eastman, Eli Finkel, and Jeffry Simpson (2019) 3 that showed stated preferences for traits in a partner might not be in alignment with a chosen partner’s actual characteristics.  “Female choice influences the occurrence of marriage, divorce, and childbearing.  This suggests a revealed female preference for earning capability in a long-term mate, regardless of stated preferences or ideals.”  In other words, watch who women marry, not who they say they might want to marry.

• Females Value Resources, Men Not So Much

“While income for men predicted greater success in long-term mating and reproduction, income for women was either unrelated or negatively related to long-term mating and reproduction.”

• It is About Female Choice

“Increased marriageability, lack of divorce, re-marriageability, and increased likelihood of fatherhood by high-income men are evidence that the marriage, divorce, and reproductive behavior of men reflect female choice,” Hopcroft said.

• Societal Norms Are Shaped by Evolved Predispositions

Hopcroft asserts (as do most evolutionary psychologists) that evolutionary approaches and sexual strategy theories take into account societal norms, values, and individual preferences that “are themselves shaped by evolved predispositions, so that sociological explanations do not exclude a role for evolved factors.”

• High-income Men Beat Low-income Men in Intrasexual Competition

Any reproductive advantage that accrued to high-income men stemmed from their marriageability and re-marriageability alone, Hopcroft’s analysis suggested.  “Competition for mates is always intrasexual,” Hopcroft concluded, “and the evidence presented here suggests that in this competition, high-income men win out over low-income men.”

• Higher-income Men More Likely to Have Younger Mates

Hopcroft reminds us that sexual strategies theory predicts male preference for younger women as mates, and men with higher personal income may be more likely to fulfill that preference. 4

Seeking Arrangement

One way for high-income men to fulfill the preference for younger mates is to find motivated and willing women online.  The phenomenon of young women seeking financial and “entrepreneurial” support from rich men has seen a recent uptick.  College is expensive.  The website service Seeking Arrangement matches “sugar daddies” with “sugar babies.”  The site’s mission directly embraces and expresses the perennial exchange between men and women – what sociologist Catherine Hakim calls the use of “erotic capital” to achieve mating objectives.5

Erotic Capital

Hakim defined erotic capital as “an individual’s beauty, sexual attractiveness, enhanced social integration, liveliness, social presentation, sexuality, and fertility that can provide opportunities to advance in life.”  Erotic capital, she says, plays a subconscious role in daily life decisions, such as career offerings, enrichment opportunities, and social networking.    Hakim asserts that current dating apps and subsequent decisions for marriage are driven by a woman’s erotic capital and a man’s economic capital.   I call this the erotic-economic bargain. (See Dynamics in the Mating Economy: Domain #1 of Male-Female Difference.)

Seeking a Wallet in the Form of a Person

Seeking Arrangement implores women to “meet a rich sugar daddy who can provide exotic trips, lavish gifts, financial support, mentoring, and the up-graded lifestyle you desire.”  Every profile comes with a “gift wish list.” One profile I read (for research purposes only) said, “I need a man that gets off by buying me things — seeking a wallet in the form of a person.”

What’s Your Price?

Seeking Arrangement has created several sister sites, including “What’s Your Price?” which allows men to bid against each other for a first date with a beautiful woman.  This bidding process promotes intrasexual economic competition between men that gives the woman a cash reward – a pay-to-play before you even get on the field.

Glorified Escort and Sex Work

Female proponents of the Seeking Arrangement tout it as a vehicle for female empowerment (with some validity).  In reality, the site primarily operates as a glorified escort and sex-worker service, which has existed for thousands of years.  Some of the women may be fantasizing about securing a rich man to marry.  Men, of course,  are fantasizing about having sex with beautiful young women.

Erotic-Economic Bargain – the Unconscious Infrastructure of Heterosexuality

The exchange of physical beauty and fertility (erotic power) for economic power (and/or protection) is the perennial bargain of human mating over eons of time.  This bargain is rooted in the willingness and capacity for parental (economic) investment from the man and the reproductive (sexual) access allowed by the women in response to that investment.  It is the unconscious infrastructure of heterosexuality — the ultimate exchange in the mating economy.

Male Aspiration for Dominance

The ability of a man to protect and provide for children is the crucial ingredient and evolutionary force driving this mate preference by women; it is the trigger for her sexual availability.  Her youth and fertility is her erotic power — a power that controls and influences male aspiration for social dominance, economic power, and competition with other men.   Sexual access to women is the penultimate motivation and prize.

Assortative Paring By Mate Value

The strength of a man’s preference for physically attractive women and a women’s preference for financially successful men works conjointly in relationship to their mate value.   At the upper end of their respective mate value, there is an assortative pairing of the beautiful with the rich.  For the “average” man or woman, the erotic economic bargain is not as stark, but its “hard-ware” (infrastructure) remains an influence along the entire spectrum of class and physical attractiveness. (See Dynamics in the Mating Economy: Domain #1 of Male-Female Difference.)

Renegotiating the Bargain?

In recent decades, the erotic-economic bargain may be undergoing a bit of renegotiation with surface or cosmetic changes that comport with our particular political moment.  Female empowerment and independence from men are progressing and evolving in their influence.   But most evidence “on the ground” of the modern dating scene does not show movement away from our ancient, evolutionary adaptations; there has not been a significant change in the foundational priorities and preferences for a partner by men and women.  Content analysis of dating websites reveals that women explicitly ask for “financially secure” or “professional” partners roughly twenty times more often than men.

Foundational Collusion

Although the exchange of sex for resources is a shared agreement, it is often implicit and “secretly” held – that is what is meant by “collusion.”  Men and women have vastly different parts to play in keeping the agreement in place.  This foundational collusion of exchange influences all other pieces of the heterosexual “puzzle.”  The erotic-economic bargain is often not explicit or conscious; it is largely “undiscussable” (Undiscussables).

“Erotic-Economic Bargain” As  Modern Evolutionary Mismatch

The hard-wired erotic-economic bargain is now destructive to the planet.   Getting off fossil fuel (which is related) may be easier than “getting off” (no pun intended) the desire by women for men with power and resources and the desire by men for women who are physically beautiful (fertile).  The “good news” is that change probably starts (or really must start) with women.

“You’ve Got the Whole World In Your Hands”

When “high mate-value” women TRULY prefer (prioritize) to mate with men of character rather than men of power, status, and money, men will change their behavior, and the planet will be saved.  (Allow me this bit of hyperbole.)  The world may be decidedly less sexy, but women’s capacity for flexibility and fluidity may be part of the roadmap for a more sustainable future.  Sexual access to women by men is a hard-wired co-variant to the desire by men for youthful, fertile, female beauty.  If women changed the criteria for sexual access, there might be a possibility for change.

It’s A Wicked Problem

In addition to hard-wired mating preferences, the intransigence of the erotic-economic bargain presents a “wicked” problem6 with multi-causal systems interacting together – including unregulated capitalism and the myth of unlimited growth.  A social safety net and guaranteed care for children may be needed to change the sexual psychology of men and women in the U.S. .

Sexual Juice Repurposed

Yes, a lot of “sexual juice” between men and women will have to be reconfigured or “repurposed” in a world where alpha-male power can no longer be an energetic-biochemical turn-on.   Women must lead the way.  Female choice is the preeminent dynamic of mate selection.  We could just kill all the men by destroying the Y chromosome – but, if you are watching Last Man Standing on Hulu, that may not be an optimal world for the women (and trans-men) who are left.

Notes

  1. Hopcroft is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has published widely in evolutionary sociology and comparative and historical sociology in journals that include the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Evolution and Human Behavior, and Human Nature.  She is the author of Sociology: A Bio-Social Introduction (2010).
  2. Income is from reported monthly earnings and amounts received from all businesses and investments. High vs. low income was determined by a statistical cut-off within the subject sample distribution.
  3. From the University of California-Davis, Northwestern University, and University of Minnesota, respectively.
  4. See “Age Differences of Male Celebrities and Their Partners,” Appendix, Dynamics in the Mating Economy: Domain #1 of Male-Female Difference.
  5. For discussion of Hakim’s research and related issues, see The Male Sexual Deficit: Social Fact of the 21st Century.
  6. From social planning and systems theory, a wicked problem is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are difficult to recognize. Most importantly, there are multiple interacting variables and no single solution.
References

Buss, D.M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences:  Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures.  The Behavior and Brain Sciences, 12(1), 1-14.

Buss, D.M. (2016). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating.

Buss, D.M., & Schmitt, D. P. (2019).  Mate preferences and their behavioral manifestations.  Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 77-110.

Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., & Simpson, J. A. (2019). Best practices for testing thy predictive validity of ideal partner preference-matching.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(2) 167-181.

Fales, M. R., et al. (2016). Mating markets and bargaining hands:  Mate preferences for attractiveness and resources in two national U.S. studies. Personality and Individual Differences, 88, 78-87.

Hopcroft, R. L. (2006). Sex, status and reproductive success in the contemporary U.S. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 104-120.

Hopcroft, R. L. (2015). Sex differences in the relationship between status and number of offspring in the contemporary U.S. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(2), 146-151.

Hopcroft, R. L. (2019).  Sex differences in the Association of Family and Personal Income and wealth with fertility in the United States, Human Nature, 30, 477-495

Walter, K. V., et al. (2020) Sex differences in mate preferences across 45 countries:  A large-scale replication. Psychological Science, 31 (4) , 408-423

Wang, G., et al. (2018). Different impacts of resources on opposite sex ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39, 220-225.

Williams, M., & Sulikowski, D. (2020).  Implicit and explicit compromises in long-term partner choice.  Personality and Individual Differences, 166, 110226.

Appendix

From Mate Value and Mating Economy,  Science of Attraction and Beauty, and Long-term and Short-term Mating Strategies: Domain # 2 of Male-Female Difference

 Women’s Long-term Strategy

Women’s long-term mating is driven by genetic characteristics and interests of our species: internal fertilization, an extended period of gestation, prolonged infant dependence on mother’s milk, and the need for relatively “high” male parental investment compared to other primates

Women Prioritize Male Status

Women have evolved to prioritize male status before being concerned about other mate characteristics.   It makes sense for women to first verify that a man has sufficient status/resources and then (and only then) seek positive levels of other characteristics. 

Mate Value Budget

Using a budget–allocation and mating screening method, evolutionary psychologist Norman Li found that under constraints of low budget, men spent the highest proportion of their budget on physical attractiveness, and women spent the highest percentage of their budget on status and resource-related characteristics.  As budgets increased, spending on these traits decreased but increased on other traits, such as creativity and intelligence.  But, when choices were highly constrained, men prioritized some minimal level of physical attractiveness, and women prioritized some minimum level of status.  Both sexes also prioritized kindness.

chart: female preferences for a long-term mate
Trade-offs Between Resources and Character

In addition to protection and a provision of resources, a woman’s long-term strategy seeks character traits that ensure stability and loyalty to her and her children over the long term.

What is often more salient in female mate selection and relationship satisfaction is the tension between the two preferences inside the female long-term strategy:  resources and character.   A woman’s long-term mating strategy often involves ambivalence and internal confusion related to her desire for a mate with resources and status and her preference for loyalty, kindness, intelligence, and character traits for parenting. (See “trade-off boundary” on the diagram below.)  In America, resources usually win this game of mate selection preference, often with rationalization and denial about the lack of optimal character.

Venn diagram: women's long-term mating strategy
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It Takes A Village – Alloparenting and Female Sexual Fluidity

It Takes A Village – Alloparenting and Female Sexual Fluidity

by | Sep 27, 2021 | Sexuality, Women's Issues

Being born with the ability to go both ways may have been beneficial to ancestral women ~ Barry Kuhle

Same-sex sexual behavior poses an evolutionary puzzle.  Reproduction is the engine of evolution.  Given the primacy of reproduction, why would sexual selection motivate women to engage in sexual behaviors with other women?

Alloparenting – A Proposed Cause of Female Sexual Fluidity

The theory of alloparenting is a proposed ultimate cause of female sexual fluidity.  It suggests that sexual fluidity increased ancestral women’s ability to form pair bonds with female alloparents who helped rear children to reproductive age.  Under this view, most heterosexual women are born with the capacity to form romantic bonds with both sexes.

The alloparenting hypothesis (and this post) is based on the research and writing of evolutionary psychologist Barry Kuhle at the University of Scranton.

Sexual Fluidity Defined

As noted in my last post, Ultimate and Proximate Causes of Female Sexual Fluidity – the Wisdom of Evolutionary Psychology, Lisa Diamond defines sexual fluidity as “situation-dependent flexibility in women’s sexual responsiveness that makes it possible for some women to experience desires for either men or women under certain circumstances, regardless of their overall sexual orientation.” Sexual fluidity is described as a conditional adaptation designed to promote opposite-sex sexual behavior in certain situations and same-sex sexual behavior in other situations.

Precursor to Proximate Causes – Men and Women Are Not the Same

In upcoming posts, Mating Straight Talk will address proximate causes (situations and immediate factors in the environment) of female same-sex behavior.  For now, let’s set the foundation of how or why female sexual fluidity was a mechanism for evolution that may have been the precursor to all proximate causes.

The nature of female sexual fluidity and occurrence of female alloparenting underscores this highest level take-away:  men and women are not the same (in aggregate) in their mating strategies and sexual responsiveness.  The sooner we really get that, the sooner a kind of healing between men and women can begin.

Ultimate Causation

What is meant by an ultimate cause? Ultimate causes of human behavior come from our ancestral past and address behavior or psychological processes that were adaptive for survival-based natural selection or reproduction-based sexual selection.

Ancestral Women Faced Problems of Paternal Investment

Ancestral women recurrently faced the adaptive problems of securing resources and care for their offspring.  They were frequently confronted with either a shortage of paternal resources due to their mates’ death, an absence of paternal investment due to rape, or divestment of paternal resources due to their mates’ extra-pair mating efforts. Fluid sexuality would have helped ancestral women secure resources and care for their offspring by promoting the acquisition of allomothering investment from unrelated women. Same-sex sexual responsiveness was triggered when inadequate paternal investment occurred or when women with alloparenting capabilities were encountered.   Perhaps this is true in modern times; the salient point (of this hypothesis) is that alloparenting and same-sex female sexuality was linked for thousands of years.

What the Alloparenting Hypothesis is Not

Kuhle is emphatic about what the alloparenting hypothesis is not:

  1. The alloparenting hypothesis is not intended to explain the evolutionary significance of a homosexual sexual orientation. Instead, it aims to account for same-sex sexual behavior among heterosexually-identified (What I called “mostly straight” or “hetero-flexible” women in Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Presentation, and Biological Sex.)
  1. The hypothesis is not intended to explain all occurrences of same-sex sexual behavior in women. The broad scope of same-sex behavior by women and the practices of self-identified lesbians do not necessarily rely on alloparenting as the primary cause.
  1. The hypothesis does not claim that all same-sex sexual behavior serves to promote alloparenting. Alloparenting is not the inevitable result of female same-sex behavior.
  1. The hypothesis does not imply that same-sex sexual behavior is the only route to alloparenting. Rather, the theory suggests that alloparenting is one sexual selection adaptation that encouraged sexually fluid mating by facilitating and sustaining bonds between mothers and allomothers.
  1. The hypothesis does not equate fluid sexuality with a chosen sexuality (as explained by Lisa Diamond in Sexual Fluidity, 2008; to be discussed in-depth in my next post). Although Kuhle postulates the existence of mating mechanisms that promote flexibility in women’s sexual responsiveness, no conscious choice is invoked or implied.
Alloparenting in Monkeys

Alloparenting is particularly common in our primate cousins.  Among squirrel monkeys, relatives and non-kin engage in alloparenting and allonursing of infants to free up time for the genetic mother to forage, find potential mates, and scour the vicinity for predators.

Among Japanese macaques, mothers allow females in the group to hold and care for their offspring. These allomothers help macaque mothers hunt, babysit, and protect infants who are very susceptible to predators. Genetic mothers and allomothers engage in frequent grooming behavior and may stay together for their entire lives. Female Japanese macaques also engage in same-sex sexual behavior, but such behavior did not promote alloparenting in a captive colony.

Alloparenting by Bonobos

Although it was once thought that non-human great apes did not alloparent, growing evidence now suggests that such behavior occurs in at least one of our great ape cousins, the bonobo.  Bonobos are 98.7% genetically similar to humans and engage in substantial alloparenting, primarily by females. Bonobo females form strong pair bonds that last the duration of their lives.  When a female reproduces, other females are significantly involved in the life of the young bonobo.

Food sharing, French Kissing, and Genital Rubbing

Food sharing is an essential component of alloparenting and one that bonobos engage in regularly. To cement pair bonds within the troop, female bonobos engage in various forms of sex with troop members, especially with females who may serve as allomothers.

Bonobo females frequently partake in a unique behavior called genito-genital (GG) rubbing, in which two females rub their prominent clitorises and genitals together. They often reach orgasm and have been observed to eye gaze with each other and hold hands during the activity, suggesting that bonding occurs. Bonobo females also engage in French kissing, releasing hormones such as oxytocin that may help individuals bond.

Bonobo Family

Bonobo Alloparenting – Friends with Benefits

Bonobo females know how to hang out together:  food sharing, French kissing, and genital rubbing – now that’s a good date!  Given the ubiquity of alloparenting and same-sex sexual behavior in bonobos, it is possible that GG rubbing and other same-sex sexual acts facilitate the acquisition of alloparent care.

Alloparenting in Humans

The human infant is tremendously dependent on its caregivers to survive and thrive. Without prolonged investment from two parents, infants and young children are more likely to die before reaching reproductive age.

Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy suggests that without cooperation from both kin and non-kin alloparents, humans may have been unable to flourish as a species because human infants are so helpless. “Alloparental care and provisioning set the stage for children to grow up slowly and remain dependent on others for many years, paving the way for the evolution of anatomically modern people with even bigger brains,” Hrdy said.

Help From Non-kin Women

Close kin are not always the dominant allo-caregiver; unrelated women often contribute substantial allomothering across cultures. Non-kin women are especially likely to alloparent if they have offspring. For example, Efé mothers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo cooperate in raising offspring by gathering and preparing food, watching for predators, and ensuring adequate shelter is sustained. This allomothering has been shown to increase the likelihood of Efé infants’ survival. Among the Aka and Nganda tribes in Central Africa, it was observed that when allomothers are available, they are always utilized.

Alloparenting Mitigated Four Adaptive Problems

According to Kuhle, sexual fluidity and the acquisition of allomothers mitigated the costs of four adaptive problems that caused a deficiency of paternal investment:   

(1) an absence of paternal investment due to rape,

(2) reduced paternal investment due to paternal defection,

(3) reduced paternal investment due to paternal death, and

(4) reduced paternal investment due to a dilution of resources.

Absence of Paternal Investment Due to Rape

Rape was a recurrent feature of our ancestral past, occurred throughout recorded human history, occurs in all human cultures, and has been documented in numerous non-human primates and other animals.*

Rape circumvented a woman’s ability to exercise mate choice; its reproductive costs were catastrophic. Rape could have left ancestral women impregnated but without investment from the father or his relatives.

Rape also caused the potential loss of a primary partner and damaged a woman’s ability to choose and acquire quality mates in the future.

Reduced Paternal Investment Due to Paternal Defection

Men have evolved preferences for women with characteristics indicative of high reproductive value. As men get older, research suggests they prefer and marry women who are increasingly younger.  Ancestral men who defected from their middle-aged mates by mating with younger women would likely have reallocated their resources and protection to younger women. The evidence that fathers who leave their wives and children invest less in those children than fathers who remain with their family is consistent with this suggestion.

Reduced Paternal Investment Due to Paternal Death

Higher male mortality and men’s tendency to mate with women younger than them, were likely features of our evolutionary history.  Men’s earlier death would have prevented them from protecting and investing in their mates and any offspring their mates bore near the time of their deaths.   Widowed mothers would likely have incurred diminished mate values that inhibited their ability to acquire quality replacement mates.

Reduced Paternal Investment Due to a Dilution of Resources

Polygynous mating systems (state or practice of a man having two or more wives) were likely a part of our ancestral history.  In modern times, 84% of 853 societies studied were found to permit polygyny — 44% considered it the preferred mating system. In polygynous mating systems, co-wives of ancestral men who acquired additional wives may have experienced a reduction of paternal investment due to the dilution of their husband’s time, investment, and protection across co-wives. As men aged, they may have divested in their established mates to free resources they could invest into new potential mates.

Men Less Averse to Women’s Same-sex Behavior

Within polygynous mating systems, male psychology is designed to be less averse to a female mate’s homosexual affair than a heterosexual affair.  Men’s common fantasy of simultaneously mating with multiple women is an outgrowth of a male psychology designed to promote their mates’ same-sex sexual behavior and may be positively correlated to the practice of female alloparenting.

Why Sexual Behavior is Connected to Alloparenting

Why does same-sex sexuality promote or correlate with alloparenting?  Let’s go back to our randy bonobo cousins. Sex is an effective means of forming, increasing, and sustaining pair bonds between people. Sexual behavior with men generally promotes women’s feelings of commitment to them. A similar process of sexual behavior-induced commitment is likely to occur between female partners. Committed partners make good alloparents.

Impetus to Design Female Sexual Fluidity

There was a maximal selective impetus to design women’s sexual responsiveness to be fluid because it mitigated the four adaptive problems listed above. Fluid sexuality would have increased an ancestral woman’s likelihood of forming a pair bond with an unrelated woman who could help rear her children through alloparenting.  Ancestral mothers would have encountered women who exhibited strong alloparenting potential.

Paradox Resolved

As the engine of evolution is reproduction, same-sex sexual behavior poses a paradox. This paradox is resolved if, far from impeding reproduction, the trait in question actually facilitates it.

In light of the alloparenting hypothesis, a trait that formerly appeared maladaptive—sexual behavior between women—is recast as an adaptive outgrowth of sexual fluidity.

Summary

According to evolutionary psychologist Barry Kuhle, acquisition of alloparental care from other females would have helped ancestral women solve the adaptive problems of a lack of paternal resources due to rape, their mates’ death, their mate’s desertion, and a general divestment of resources by their mate.

Sexual fluidity may have been one way to solidify alloparent care.  From this perspective, most heterosexual women are born with the capacity to form romantic bonds with both sexes.

Same-sex sexual responsiveness is triggered when inadequate paternal investment occurs or when women with alloparenting capabilities are encountered. Being born with the ability to go both ways may have been beneficial to ancestral women.

Note

* Evolutionary psychology does not assert that what is true ought to be true (the “naturalistic fallacy”).  Obviously, the ubiquity of rape is abhorrent to our modern-day moral sensibility.  With rare exceptions, and rape may be one, evolutionary psychologists attempt to describe what human nature is like, not prescribe what humans should do. 

References

Diamond, L. M. (2008). Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. Harvard University Press.

Hrdy, S. B. (1999).  Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection.  Pantheon Books.

Kuhle, B. & Radtke, S. (2013).  “Born both ways: The alloparenting hypothesis for sexual fluidity in women.”  Evolutionary Psychology, 11, 304-323.

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Ultimate and Proximate Causes of Female Sexual Fluidity – the Wisdom of Evolutionary Psychology

Ultimate and Proximate Causes of Female Sexual Fluidity – the Wisdom of Evolutionary Psychology

by | Sep 14, 2021 | Sexuality, Women's Issues

Problems arise when proximate explanations, like sociocultural theories, are used in place of ultimate explanations, or evolutionary theories, to explain human characteristics.  ~ Alex Mackiel

In my last post (First Principle: Acknowledge Male-Female Differences), I underscored the need to acknowledge differences between men and women in their sexual psychology and response in preparation for understanding sexual orientation and the sexual fluidity of women.  I outlined twenty-two domains of difference. Several of these domains (such as #15 – “influence of context”) directly clarify the causes and expression of female sexual fluidity, or as researcher Lisa Diamond describes it, the “situation-dependent flexibility in women’s sexual responsiveness.”  I will address all manifestations, causes, and effects of women’s sexual fluidity in future posts.

Thanks for Letting Me Set the Foundation

Today’s post is very “inside-baseball” and may have limited appeal to casual readers.  What follows is not popular, titillating, twitter-ready, easy-to-eat-like-candy fluff psychology.  Intellectual integrity and rigor demand that consideration of female sexual fluidity (in this particular cultural moment) revisit basic concepts of evolutionary psychology and address misconceptions about its tenets (see Appendix).  I explain and defend evolutionary psychology as an educator and reluctant contrarian to the dominant narratives of the academic social sciences and politically-correct thinking.  Reviewing concepts of evolutionary psychology will provide a foundation for understanding the biological and cultural adaptations of female sexuality.

Women’s Sexual Functioning Demonstrates Biological and Cultural Adaptations

Women’s sexual functioning includes sexual attractions, romantic affections, sexual practices/behaviors, and preference/orientation identities that are different from men’s sexual functioning due to biological and cultural adaptations.

Evolutionary Psychology Explains Biological and Cultural Adaptations

Basic tenets of evolutionary psychology (EP) undergird the arguments and evidence about female sexual fluidity (see What is Evolutionary Psychology?) and clarify the interplay of biological and cultural adaptations that operate in female sexual psychology and response. 

How or Why “Situations” Trigger Female Sexual Fluidity

If female sexuality is “situation-dependent,” we must understand not only what situations trigger same-sex attractions, bi-sexual identity, or hetero-flexible behavior, but how or why those situations operate as triggers.

Move “Upstream” to Understand Adaptations

Acknowledging the evolved behavioral differences between men and women is a “first principle” that explains the difference between the sexual psychology of men and women; it certainly explains different degrees of sexual fluidity.  But we might need to move “upstream” one step further to understand how behaviors become adaptive over thousands of years of human evolution.  We must clarify the difference between ultimate and proximate causes to completely understand modern-day female sexual fluidity.

Female Sexuality is Sensitive to Context

Female sexuality is dramatically sensitive to context.  Women are more context-dependent than men; all external circumstances of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, orgasm, choice of partner, and orientation identity.  Situation-dependent equals context-dependent.  Women’s “situation-dependent” sexual fluidity implies the power of proximate causes, but it does not eliminate the possibility of ultimate causes driven by evolutionary adaptation.

Causes of Sexual Fluidity and Patterns of Expression

My next post will address “ultimate” (evolutionary) causation theories for female sexual fluidity, such as the alloparenting hypothesis.  After that, I will handle the “juicy” stuff:  patterns of desire (and its three elements), sexual behavior, and sexual orientation identities.  Importantly, research suggests functional independence (potentially) of these patterns for any particular woman.  You can begin to see the possible permutations of female sexual expression.

Definition and Overview of Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology (EP) is the study of human nature – meaning the study of evolved psychological mechanisms or psychological adaptations.  An adaptation is a product of evolution by natural and sexual selection that allows the human species to solve particular problems — most importantly, problems of survival and reproduction.  EP contends adaptations are behind most of our preferences, desires, and emotions and incline us to behave specific ways.  EP is particularly focused on behavior traits that appear to be universal across human populations.

Culture and Nature are Part of Evolutionary design

EP believes humans are born with an innate nature and that culture and learning are part of the evolutionary design and, thus, also innate.  This blend of intrinsic nature and culture is called the “dual inheritance” model of human evolution which explains how we are “structured prior to experience.”

Psychological Adaptations Operate Beneath Conscious Thinking

Psychological adaptations exist in the brain and operate primarily beneath conscious thinking.  For example, male sexual jealousy is an evolved psychological mechanism that prevents cuckoldry and investment in children who will not carry the man’s genes into the next generation.  EP explains human behavior in terms of the interaction between these evolved psychological mechanisms and the current environment in which they express themselves.

Adaptations Emerge at Appropriate Time

Adaptations do not need to appear at birth.  Many adaptations develop long after birth (e.g., walking by humans and development of female breasts).   With some exceptions, an adaptation “must emerge at the appropriate time during an organism’s life in reasonably intact form, and hence be characteristic of most or all of the members of a given species” (Buss, D.M. 1999, p. 36).

Proximate Causes Are Triggers for Female Sexual Fluidity

Evolutionary psychologists examine proximate and ultimate causes of behavior.  Proximate causes of behavior often include stimuli in the immediate environment of the organism or physiological mechanisms inside the organism.  Such stimuli include the current cultural triggers of female sexual fluidity.

When and Where Our Mind Developed – the Timing of Ultimate Causation

Humans (the genus Homo) appeared between 1.5 and 2.5 million years ago, in a time roughly coinciding with the start of the Pleistocene Epoch.   Because the Pleistocene ended only 11,700 years ago, most human adaptations either newly evolved during the Pleistocene or were maintained during that era.   EP, therefore, proposes that the majority of human psychological mechanisms are adapted to solve survival and reproductive problems frequently encountered in Pleistocene environments.

Ultimate Causes from the Ancestral Past

Ultimate causes of behavior evoke our ancestral past and address behavior or psychological processes that were adaptive for survival-based natural selection or reproduction-based sexual selection.  Ultimate causes of a behavior pertain to our evolutionary (phylogenetic) history, addressing these questions (for purposes of this discussion):

How did female sexual fluidity come to be?  How was it adaptive? How did it confer reproductive benefits to individuals with this behavior?

Evolutionary “Situationalism” – Proximate Causes of Survival and Reproduction

EP seeks to understand both proximate and ultimate causes of species-typical psychological processes in light of basic evolutionary theory.    Modern-day EP posits “evolutionary situationalism” (Geher, G. 2014).  Situational factors that matter most in affecting behavior are the ones that bear directly on factors associated with survival and reproductive success. Five decades of feminism and women’s economic progress and political empowerment are likely contributing proximate causes of female sexual fluidity.  (To be explained in subsequent posts.)

Alloparenting is a Proposed Ultimate Cause of Female Sexual Fluidity

The theory of alloparenting is a proposed ultimate cause of female sexual fluidity.  It posits that sexual fluidity in women is a contingent adaptation that increased ancestral women’s ability to form pair bonds with female alloparents who helped rear children to reproductive age.  Under this view, most heterosexual women are born with the capacity to form romantic bonds with both sexes. (My next post will explain this in-depth.)

Interplay of Biological and Cultural Adaptations

EP sees total congruence between learning and evolution; they are natural explanatory partners – perfectly compatible.  Many evolutionary hypotheses are about learning.  Humans are endowed with evolved learning mechanisms embodied in the brain.   For instance, the claim that humans have an evolved fear of snakes and spiders does not mean that people are born with this fear.  Instead, it means that humans are endowed with an evolved learning mechanism that acquires a fear of snakes more easily and readily than other fears. Learning itself is a Darwinian process and provides one of several possible mechanisms of inheritance in addition to conventional genetic processes.

Nature versus Nurture is a Strawman Debate

It should be clear by now that nature versus nurture is an antiquated “strawman” debate*, especially as a critique of evolutionary psychology.  (See Appendix below.)  Ultimate and proximate causes easily co-exist – but it is the “nature” part of the equation, the research about ultimate evolutionary causation, and the evidence of evolved behavioral sex difference that have been under-reported and too often dismissed in the halls of contemporary political and academic inquiry.

Problems arise when proximate explanations, like sociocultural theories, are used in place of ultimate explanations, or evolutionary theories, to explain human characteristics.

Sociocultural and Evolutionary Explanations Are Not at Odds

Sociocultural and evolutionary explanations are not necessarily at odds with each other.  Evolutionary psychology is an interactionalist framework.  Human minds created culture in the first place.  Both operate simultaneously to cause most human actions, such as aggressive behavior.  It would be virtually impossible for humans to acquire and learn their culture and all its complexity without innate mechanisms in place to make it happen.

Evolutionary psychologist Glenn Geher offers, in summary: “Given this focus on both environmental and innate causes of behavior, coupled with a genuine focus on proximate and ultimate cause of behavior, evolutionary psychology is truly an approach to psychology that embraces both the nature and nurture side of that debate” (Geher, G., 2014, p. 22).

Conclusion and Summary

There are both ultimate and proximate causes of female sexual fluidity.  My next post will describe the ultimate cause(s).  After that, I will address the more proximate, modern-day situational causes and expressions of women’s same-sex orientation and bi-sexual and hetero-flexible behavior.  All of this rests on the foundation of evolutionary science – or at least an appreciation of how the field of evolutionary psychology informs the discussion.**  But the contexts or “situations” in our current sociocultural moment are rich with nuance and ripe for observation. Why did your mother take up with a woman in her fifth decade of life in 2021?  I will get to that.

Notes

*A strawman is a fallacious argument that distorts an opposing stance in order to make it easier to attack.  EP has been attacked for supposedly not incorporating “nurture” in its framework.

**Sources Outside of Evolutionary Psychology

It is worth reminding you that MatingStraightTalk draws heavily on psychologists, sexuality educators/researchers, social scientists, neurobiologists, and investigative journalists that fall outside the ranks of evolutionary psychology but whose work mostly corroborates evolutionary ideas about the context-driven, proximate causes of female sexual fluidity.

The theories and writing of Emily Nagoski (Come As You Are) are very on target.

See blog posts:

Also relevant are these posts: 

I will give an in-depth analysis of Lisa Diamond’s seminal work (Sexual Fluidity, Understanding Women’s Love and Desire) and Jennifer Baumgardner’s book, Look Both Ways, Bisexual Politics. Baumgardner relates her personal story and the stories of women in the 70’s and 80’s.  These women were at the leading edge of discovering, integrating, and “coping” with the milieu of the women’s movement through the lens of sexual identification and sexual practice.

Appendix: Correcting Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology
  • EP does not focus mainly on mate selection and reproduction.
    While research on evolved behavioral sex differences has been prolific, the broader field studies parenting, education, politics, emotions, morality, aggression, mental health, physical health, technology, and mismatches of evolutionary design in the modern world.
  • A belief in evolved behavioral sex differences does not negate support for women’s equality and political empowerment.
    Most evolutionary psychologists reside in academic institutions; survey research of these psychologists shows a decided leaning to the political left generally representative in the academic community.  Many feminist scholars do indeed disparage evolutionary psychology.  The bias is so strong that it has been studied as a separate phenomenon. Steven Pinker in The Blank State explains an EP position that equality is not sameness: “equality is not the claim that groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be constrained by the average properties of that group.”  EP also supports equal access to all rights and privileges of economic power and role flexibility for both sexes.
  • EP does not claim that products of evolution are present at birth or emerge very early in development.
    This is not how natural selection works.  Adaptations come online during the developmental phase in which they are needed – they develop reliably in all or most members of a species during the appropriate developmental state of an organism’s life.
  • Evolution (EP) does not imply that behavior is genetically determined.
    Evolutionary psychologists believe that everything in the mind, body, and brain is co-determined by genes and the environment.  Environmental pressures drive the evolution of adaptations, and adaptations require environmental input to develop correctly during an organism’s lifespan.  Environmental triggers are necessary to activate the adaptation in the present.  All adaptations have a genetic basis but are not genetically determined.  Genes often build different minds in response to different environments.

    Different environments will change the way the mind causes behavior.   Thus, evolutionary psychologists accept that it is possible to change most human behavior. This flexibility is an essential part of how we are designed.  Natural selection has programmed human development to be contingent on various environmental triggers.

    “However, humans are not infinitely flexible.  Changes in the environment still interact with a relatively stable genome and a relatively fixed mental architecture.  We can’t make people fly just by giving them plastic wings” (Evans, D. & Zarate, O., 2005, p. 161).

  • EP does not suggest behavior will be uniform across cultures; it suggests the neurocognitive machinery that produces behavior will be uniform across cultures.
    Natural selection has sculpted a universal ability to learn language, but the language learned depends on where a person grows up.  “Evoked culture” refers to cultural differences between groups that arise from combining a universal psychological mechanism with environmental inputs that differ across cultures.  Cultural differences in mating strategy demonstrate this by responding to a particular operational sex ratio in the local environment.   Evolutionary approaches to psychology predict cross-cultural universality at the level of information processing mechanisms, not at the level of behavior.  Again, this is called the “dual inheritance” model of human evolution, illustrating how we are “structured prior to experience.”
  • EP does not think everything is an adaptation.
    Evolution also yields “byproducts” (spandrels) and “noise.”  Examples of byproducts include racism, sexual fetishism among men, homicide, uxoricide (killing a wife), and filicide (killing a son or daughter), religion and belief in the supernatural.  Evolutionary biology uses the term “spandrel” for features of an organism arising as byproducts rather than adaptations that have no clear benefit for the organism’s fitness and survival.

    Evolutionary psychologists accept that much of human behavior is a side-effect of modules designed for other things.  Some authors believe that the great products of human civilization — including art, religion, and science, are side-effects of modules originally designed for other purposes.  However, Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind, 2000) and most evolutionary psychologists now say that capacities for creative expression are, in fact, essential modules, or primary adaptations inside the global adaptation of sexual selection.

  • EP does address individual difference.
    Although evolutionary psychology began with studying universal and sex-typical mechanisms, the last twenty years have produced a plenitude of research on individual differences related to personality characteristics, sexual jealousy, disgust, mating strategies, and within-sex variation, to name a few.
  • EP does not assert that what is true ought to be true (the “naturalistic fallacy”).
    Evolutionary psychologists attempt to describe what human nature is like, not prescribe what humans should do.  They argue that discoveries of EP could be used to inform left-wing policies just as much, if not more than right-wing policies.  For example, the equal distribution of wealth could be advocated for by knowing that humans are adapted to live in groups in which inequality is relatively low.  EP does not make moral or value judgments. 
  • EP does not believe in or promote eugenics.
    EP does not believe in selective breeding or optimizing the gene pool.  (Do I have to say this?) EP is focused on human behavior as shaped to optimize an individual’s chances of reproduction with no regard for saving the species.  Natural selection happens at the level of the individual organism.  Eugenics is a group-selection doctrine.  But finding mates with good genes is indeed one of the significant functions of mate choice across all sexually reproducing species.
  • EP does not use questionable research methodology – it is not “just-so stories.”
    “Just-so storytelling” refers to the process by which a researcher notices something about human behavior, proposes an explanation for it (an evolutionary one in this case), and then decides to believe that explanation without further inquiry or testing.  This criticism asserts EP over-applies evolutionary explanations and that there are no safeguards against such over-application.  But, it is a misconception that evolutionary psychologists will take any finding and mold it into an evolutionary explanation after the fact.
  • Evolutionary psychology (EP) is not simply a sub-discipline of psychology.
    Evolutionary theory integrates the life sciences and unites many disciplines.  Thus, modern evolutionary theory provides a foundational, meta-theoretical framework that integrates the entire field of psychology.  EP draws insights from anthropology, economics, computer science, and paleo-archaeology but relies mostly on the combination of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology.
References

Buss, D.M. (1999). Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science of Mind.

Buss, D.M., & von Hippel, W. (2018). Psychological Barriers to Evolutionary Psychology: Ideological Bias and Coalitional Adaptations.  Archives of Scientific Psychology, 6(1) 148-158.

Evans, D., & Zarate, O., (2005).  Introducing Evolutionary Psychology.

Geher, G. (2014).  Evolutionary Psychology 101.

Mackiel, A. (2019) What Explains the Resistance to Evolutionary Psychology?  Quilette (April 8).

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First Principle: Acknowledge Male-Female Differences

First Principle: Acknowledge Male-Female Differences

by | Aug 30, 2021 | Biological Difference, Dating & Mating Economy, Gender Politics, Relationship Issues, Sexuality

As I prepare to address issues of sexual orientation and fluidity (see Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Presentation, and Biological Sex), it seems appropriate if not necessary to review “first principles” related to my mission and central message, including:

  • Assumptions of Mating Straight Talk
  • General differences between men and women in sexual psychology and response
  • The twenty-two (22) domains of male-female difference. Domain #13 is related to the influence of context, and domain #15 is about sexual orientation, preference, and response variability.  These domains will receive special attention in coming posts. But nearly all domains have an impact on sexual fluidity.
Denial of Sex Differences is Problematic

Part of the mission of Mating Straight Talk is to affirm the differences between the sexes as revealed by evolutionary science and psychological research.  My motivation?  The denial of relevant sex differences in our culture is nearly as problematic as the denial of similarities related to race, ethnicity, and religion.

We Are Uniquely The Same

As a degreed person from a  humanistic psychology graduate program started by a colleague of Abraham Maslow, I am well aware of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Although at least one evolutionary psychologist (Douglas Kenrick at Arizona State) has offered a revision of Maslow’s hierarchy to include sex, mate acquisition, and mate retention, I embrace Maslow’s original ideas describing the universal features of human beings – similar needs of all human men and women.  But from an evolutionary perspective, a salient question remains: How do men vs. women uniquely meet the needs of esteem, belonging, and intimacy as a function of their biological sex?  Is it the same in aggregate?  I think not.

Universal Emotions — Sex-Specific Causes

I believe in exploring universal emotional needs as a pathway for healing interpersonal relationships, perhaps, especially for couples.  All men and women experience anger, sadness, fear, joy, anticipation, surprise, disgust, and trust.*  But there are often sex-specific causes for these emotions.

We are “spiritually” all one.  In the quantum universe, we are the same.  In the material world of dimorphic human culture, we are most often diverse and functionally unique as an expression of our gender and sex.

Assumptions of Mating Straight Talk

Men and women have similarities as human beings and aggregate differences that are primarily a function of biology and evolutionary adaptation.  Our similarities do not often cause conflict.  But our differences, and the denial of those differences, often cause “trouble.”

Women and men have differences that we must acknowledge and understand to have satisfying heterosexual (romantic and sexual) relationships.

Men and women have differences that we must acknowledge to “re-balance” and integrate the biological and social sciences in academia and overcome resistance to the facts of evolved behavioral sex differences and evolutionary psychology.

Women and men have differences that we must acknowledge and understand to clarify the “politics” of sex and gender and challenge pockets of censorship in the public domain.

Men and women need “straight talk” (radical honesty) to uncover and accept our differences.

Women and men need “straight talk” about our differences to empower one another for co-creative relationships.

Vive la Différence

Over the millennia, men and women have evolved with different objectives and strategies of sexual psychology and response related to choosing a mate, reproduction, and parental investment.

General Differences between Men and Women in Sexual Psychology and Response
  • Women have their unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and vary more than men in anatomy, sexual response, sexual mechanisms, and how their bodies respond to the sexual world. Women vary more widely from each other and change more substantially over their lifetime than do men.
  • Women are less likely to have alignment (“concordance”) between their genital response and subjective arousal; this causes confusion and misunderstanding for women and their male partners. Men have dramatically more concordance between their genital response and subjective arousal.
  • All sex happens in context. Women are more context-sensitive than men, and all external circumstances of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, and orgasm.
  • Women’s sexual functioning is more influenced by their internal brain state — how they think and feel about sex. Judgment, shame, stress, mood, trust, body image, and past trauma influence a woman’s sexual well-being.
  • Men and women have significantly different hormones and some variations in brain structure. Differences caused by the amount of testosterone cannot be overstated.
  • Women and men differ significantly in visual orientation for physical attraction and production of sexual thoughts.
  • Men and women have different preferences and priorities for the traits desired in a mate (with agreement about kindness, stability, humor, and care of children).
  • Human sexual response consists of a “dual control” system with an excitation mechanism (“accelerator”) and an inhibition mechanism (“brake”). Men are accelerator-dominant, and women are brake-dominant.
  • Related to differences between the sexual “accelerator” and “brake,” men operate primarily from “spontaneous desire” triggers, and women operate primarily from “response desire” triggers.
  • Men sell (primarily), and women buy (most often) in the mating economy; this is the predominant evolutionary dynamic. The psychology of the sexual initiator and pursuer is vastly different from that of the one pursued and the one who chooses among her pursuers.
  • The psychology of male intra-sexual competition differs from that of female intersexual selection (preferential mate choice.) Also, women’s intra-sexual competition (competing against each other) for male attention is a different behavioral phenomenon than male-on-male competition.

And last but not least:

  • Women’s sexual functioning includes sexual attractions, romantic affections, sexual practices/behaviors, and preference/orientation identities that are different from men’s sexual functioning due to biological and cultural adaptations. The fundamental and defining feature of female sexual orientation is fluidity.  Men are not nearly as fluid as women.  Researcher Lisa Diamond (Sexual Fluidity — Understanding Women’s Love and Desire) defines sexual fluidity as “situation-dependent flexibility in women’s sexual responsiveness.”

Terms of Engagement – Prelude to Understanding Female Sexual Fluidity

Diamond uses the term “sexual orientation” to mean a consistent pattern of sexual desire for individuals of the same-sex, other-sex, or both sexes, regardless of whether this pattern of desire is manifested in sexual behavior.

Sexual Identity

“Sexual identity” refers to a culturally organized conception of the self, usually “lesbian/gay,” “bisexual,” or “heterosexual.”  As with “sexual orientation,” Diamond says we cannot presume that these identities correspond with particular patterns of behavior, especially for women.  Nor can we assume that they correspond with specific patterns of desire.  Women often reject conventional labels in favor of “queer,” “questioning,” “pansexual,” or simply “unlabeled.”

Same-Sex and Other-Sex Orientation

Diamond uses the term “same-sex orientation” to refer to all experiences of same-sex desire, romantic affection, fantasy, or behavior.  She uses “other-sex” sexuality instead of “opposite sex” because (she says) it is more scientifically accurate.  She uses the terms “lesbian” and “bisexual” but considers them problematic (to be addressed later.)  If a person is 100 percent attracted to one sex, they are “exclusively” attracted (in Diamond’s terminology).  All other patterns of attraction are “nonexclusive.”

Domains of Male-Female Differences in Sexual Psychology

Here is a list of the twenty-two domains of male-female differences in sexual psychology and response.  There is overlap and synergy between the domains, but the underlying distinctions are clarifying. These differences are based on statistical aggregates of all men and women from authoritative research studies and cannot predict the unique sexuality of a particular man or woman.

  1. Behavioral dynamics in the mating economy
  2. Long-term vs. short-term mating strategies
  3. Trait preferences and priorities for mate selection
  4. Physical attraction and perceptions of beauty
  5. Concordance between physiological response and psychological desire
  6. Spontaneous desire vs. response desire
  7. Sex and love-making that fuels desire
  8. Accelerator vs. brake: sexual excitation and inhibition systems
  9. Brain structures: sexual pursuit and visual stimuli
  10. Hormonal differences
  11. Variety and novelty
  12. Sexual mentation and “sex drive”
  13. Influence of context
  14. Female competing intentions and imposed double binds
  15. Sexual orientation (and preference) fluidity and response variability
  16. Orgasm – purpose and characteristics
  17. Meta emotions
  18. Romance and desire, together and apart
  19. Psychology of monogamy
  20. Infidelity – reasons and response
  21. Jealousy – triggers, tactics, and consequences
  22. Sexual fantasies

I will eventually examine each domain as a distinct phenomenon of difference. However, some domains will be addressed together because they are related or parallel in physiological or psychological response.  Differences between men and women in genetic make-up and physical morphology are not included as separate domains (see Biological Differences).  But genetic differences will be addressed in a future post about “biological sex.”

*In modern-day “assortative mating” — the economy of mate selection — a similarity of interests, values, and background works better for relationship satisfaction than “opposites attracting.”

 

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