CHAPTER THREE
A Closer Look at the Standard Narrative of Human Sexual Evolution
We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1
True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)
Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention.
And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse.
Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.
We don’t claim that men and women experience their eroticism in precisely the same ways, but as Tiresias noted, both women and men find considerable pleasure there. True, it may take most women a bit longer to get the sexual motor running than it does men, but once warmed up, most women are fully capable of leaving any man far behind. No doubt, males tend to be more concerned with a woman’s looks, while most women find a man’s character more compelling than his appearance (within limits, of course). And it’s true that women’s biology gives them a lot more to consider before a roll in the hay.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld sums it up in terms of fire and firemen: “The basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.”
Perhaps for many women libido is like the hunger of a gourmand. Unlike many men, such women don’t yearn to eat just to stop the hunger. They’re looking for particular satisfactions presented in certain ways. Where most men can and do hunger for sex in the abstract, women report wanting narrative, character, a reason for sex.* In other words, we agree with many of the observations central to evolutionary psychology—it’s the contorted, internally conflicted explanations for these observations that we find problematic.
Still, there are simple, logical, consistent explanations for most of these standard observations concerning human sexuality—explanations that offer an alternative narrative of human sexual evolution that is both parsimonious and elegant; a revised model that requires none of the convoluted mixed strategies and Flintstonizing intrinsic to the currently accepted story.
The standard narrative paints a dark image of our species over a much brighter—albeit somewhat scandalous—truth. Before presenting our model in detail, let’s take a closer look at the standard narrative, focusing on the four major areas of research that incorporate the most widely accepted assumptions:
• The relatively weak female libido
• Male parental investment (MPI)
• Sexual jealousy and paternity certainty
• Extended receptivity and concealed (or cryptic) ovulation
How Darwin Insults Your Mother (The Dismal Science of Sexual Economics)
What does the winning male suitor supposedly get for all his preening and showing off? Sex. Well, not just sex, but exclusive access to a particular woman. The standard model posits that sexual exclusivity is crucial because in evolutionary times this was a man’s only way of ensuring his paternity. According to evolutionary psychology, this is the grudging agreement at the heart of the human family. Men offer goods and services (in prehistoric environments, primarily meat, shelter, protection, and status) in exchange for exclusive, relatively consistent sexual access. Helen Fisher called it The Sex Contract.
Economics, often referred to as the dismal science, is never more dismal than when applied to human sexuality. The sex contract is often explained in terms of economic game theory in which she or he who has the most offspring surviving to reproduce wins—because her or his “return on investment” is highest. So, if a woman becomes pregnant by a guy who has no intention of helping her through pregnancy or guiding the child through the high-risk early years, she likely is squandering the time, energy, and risks of pregnancy. According to this theory, without the help of the father, chances are much better that the child will die before reaching sexual maturity—not to mention the increased health risks to the pregnant or nursing mother. Prominent evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker calls this way of looking at human reproduction the genetic economics of sex: “The minimum investments of a man and a woman are … unequal,” explains Pinker, “because a child can be born to a single mother whose husband has fled but not to a single father whose wife has fled. But the investment of the man is greater than zero, which means that women are also predicted to compete in the marriage market, though they should compete over the males most likely to invest …”3
Conversely, if a guy invests all his time, energy, and resources in a woman who’s doing the nasty behind his back, he’s at risk of raising another man’s kids—a total loss if his sole purpose in life is getting his own genes into the future. And make no mistake: according to the cold logic of standard evolutionary theory, leaving a genetic legacy is our sole purpose in life. This is why evolutionary psychologists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly argue that men take a decidedly proprietary view of women’s sexuality: “Men lay claim to particular women as songbirds lay claim to territories, as lions lay claim to a kill, or as people of both sexes lay claim to valuables,” they write. “Having located an individually recognizable and potentially defensible resource packet, the proprietary creature proceeds to advertise and exercise the intention of defending it from rivals.”4
“Baby, I love you like a lion loves his kill.” Surely, a less romantic description of marriage has never been written.
As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources. Maybe mythic resonance explains part of the huge box-office appeal of a film like Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere’s character trades access to his wealth in exchange for what Julia Roberts’s character has to offer (she plays a hooker with a heart of gold, if you missed it). Please note that what she’s got to offer is limited to the aforementioned heart of gold, a smile as big as Texas, a pair of long, lovely legs, and the solemn promise that they’ll open only for him from now on. The genius of Pretty Woman lies in making explicit what’s been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory, women have evolved to unthinkingly and unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man’s wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children.
Darwin says your mother’s a whore. Simple as that.
Lest you think we’re being flip, we assure you that the bartering of female fertility and fidelity in exchange for goods and services is one of the foundational premises of evolutionary psychology. The Adapted Mind, a book many consider to be the bible of the field, spells out the sex contract very clearly:
A man’s sexual attractiveness to women will be a function of traits that were correlated with high mate value in the natural environment…. The crucial question is, What traits would have been correlated with high mate value? Three possible answers are as follows:
• The willingness and ability of a man to provide for a woman and her children….
• The willingness and ability of a man to protect a woman and her children….
• The willingness and ability of a man to engage in direct parenting activities.5
Now let’s review some of the most prominent research founded upon these assumptions about men, women, family structure, and prehistoric life.