why women have sex: another stupid study by evolutionary psychologists

Those researchers who like to give themselves high-falootin’ titles like “Evolutionary Psychologist” (neither science nor psychology is truly part of their discipline) are at it again.

Tanya Gold, writing in the Guardian (Why Women Have Sex), gives us a little sarcasm, but too little. I wish she had ripped this book apart like some of the commenters did. To be fair, the book writers “discovered” all kinds of reasons women have sex, and I’m sure they’re all true. What’s ridiculous is the question. What’s ridiculouser is the notion that the reasons all somehow find their beginning in genes.

My objection to this line of research isn’t in the results: they come up with 237 reasons, ranging from sheer lust to pity to security to greed. Obvious. Some idiot gave a grant to have a book published that tells the obvious. Hope it wasn’t tax dollars. No, what bugs me is what always bugs me about EP: their gender bias and culture-blindness. 

Apparently, the reasons men have sex are obvious–no book needed–but no one can figure why women would give up their Friday evenings watching Ghost Whisperer.  The women who do, do it for reasons that relate back to rearing more and better babies. Genetically successful women wear lipstick, heels, and get boob jobs to attract a mate because evolution has somehow programmed men to pop one at seeing these CULTURALLY SPECIFIC and HISTORICALLY TRANSIENT features. All this somehow leads to survival of the fittest. It’s not explained–ever–how survival mechanisms can be extrapolated from cultural activities.

How would EP explain the 16th century with gene theory and no analysis of cultural coercion? For those of you ignorant of the march of time, it was men who used to slap on the Maybelline and pooch their butts up for women to behold. Not only that, in that fashionable time, women were thought to be barely restrainable sex mongers; hence equating women to the devil, seeing them as witches, and denying them any public power.

In other words, men aren’t attracted to women with lipstick because it reminds them of a vagina; successful genes haven’t survived because men’s sensibilities take note of the physically healthiest female body from transient clues. The men who are attracted to women who wear lipstick or who get boob jobs, for example, are more likely interested in women who are of a certain class and attitude and who can therefore be the partner the man desires, in ways far more complex than just a good time, or even a baby-maker. 

A woman’s status as an object in a patriarchal culture rises the more she plays the part culture assigns, and a man’s possession of her reflects his status. 

Where is the discussion of culture in this ridiculous discipline? This is why we need to teach feminism in schools. But, no point in looking like an angry dyke. Just call yourself a scientist and reinforce the patriarchal ideas of what a woman is for and what a man can’t help. 

So, I’m off to watch Ghost Whisperer. You really think I’m going to give up watching that cleavage? That’s reason number 238. They didn’t interview me for the book.