The Ol' Straitjacket...

[elfs]

It's often been said that if straight men could reliably get from the object of their attraction what gay men get, reliable, relentless, reciprocated, active desire with understood and appreciated feedback, they'd whine a lot less. (Of course, this assumes that women are exactly like men, and lesbian relationships would in general look much more like gay male relationships, which of course is not the real world.)

Recently, the press has been handwringing that we're trying to straitjacket women into a role like that of gay men, where they're expected to be all of the things I described above without bringing any feminine qualities to they're relationships whatsoever. The "Hook-up" culture, the pundits have warned, is all about having sex, and devastates any potential for a meaningful relationship among the participants. And several studies have shown that yes, people who hook up tend to break up at a statistically higher rate than those who wait to have sex.

And the evolutionary psychologists over in the corner have talked about "strategies" for our Darwinian success as a species, and pointed out that there are two standard foci around which reproductive strategies converge: high-investment and low-investment. "High investment" strategies emerge during periods of sufficient resource: because there's enough food, parents put much effort into fewer "high-quality children" while ensuring that those those resources are secured for the familial gene pool for future generations. "Low investment" strategies emerge during periods of strife and famine, when women bear the brunt of genetic scattering, having many "low-quality children" in the hopes that some will survive to adulthood and carry the selfish familial genes on.

What seems obvious is that some percentage of women will be optimized for one strategy over another, and find themselves mis-fit to the strategy indicated by resource availability. This is a long-winded way of getting around to saying: hey, some women are happy being promiscuous. Just like some men are happy being monogamous.

University of Iowa researcher David Paik asked a rather obvious question: if we take those women out of the studies about hook-ups, what do we see? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that people who hook-up are just as likely to have meaningful long-term relationships as those who delay sex.

It seems to me we're seeing an echo of the ancient "Madonna or Whore" story, only this time the echo is weaker. Maybe someday we'll be able to just let people enjoy themselves. The barriers to sexual satisfaction, such as disease or accidental pregnancy, can be mitigated, and hopefully eliminated someday.

The cynic in me believes that will probably be about the same time that sufficiently advanced sexual surrogates will exist such that "real sex," with another human being, with his or her sweat and bodily fluids, his or her own competing desires and agendas, will be another kink, an option taken only by the masochistic.

Comments

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

The cynic in me believes that will probably be about the same time that sufficiently advanced sexual surrogates will exist such that "real sex," with another human being, with his or her sweat and bodily fluids, his or her own competing desires and agendas, will be another kink, an option taken only by the masochistic.

Peter Watts called. He wants his memespace back.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mangled the quote. Although I've held the opinion that masturbatory substitutes will outpace the real thing since long before I read Watts. Although he's scarily consistent; the same meme appears in Rifters, too.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Well, he's probably right. I think that it goes beyond sex; eventually, expert systems are going to be better at fulfilling any sort of social or interactive need than messy, inconvenient, selfish other people. Given time, they will even be good at standing up to us just enough that we remain functional and sane.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The odd thing is that the study I read yesterday gives me hope: we'll know when we're being phony, and when we're not. Whether that'll be enough, especially where sex is concerned, is the interesting question.

Then again, the fact that rape declines precipitously in states where pornography laws are relaxed worries me a great deal: it tells me that pornography successfully kept a common class of rapists at home long enough for them to mature out of that stage. And that's merely movies.

[(Anonymous)]

Not everything can be explained by evolutionary psychology.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

What seems obvious is that some percentage of women will be optimized for one strategy over another, and find themselves mis-fit to the strategy indicated by resource availability. This is a long-winded way of getting around to saying: hey, some women are happy being promiscuous. Just like some men are happy being monogamous.

Um, no. That would not be obvious, or make sense, actually. The idea that genetics would create two different sets of women would mean that the human species would not be able to react quickly to quick changes in environment (and we all know how quickly an environment can go from lush to scarce).

What makes much more sense is that the species is rigged to do both. In lush environments, the female goes into high-investment mode, and in scarcity, the female goes into low-investment mode.

There also has to be an element of skill involved as well (environmental impact molding the genes). In other words, the longer the females of a particular group (tribe, clan, etc) are in low-investment mode, the harder of a time that group will have moving into high-investment mode once the lush environments return. And vice-versa.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Actually, it does sort of make sense, with some modifications. First, I wouldn't mark it up to distinct genetic categories without a study. I would also describe it as a slider rather than a toggle, with women at various places along it present in the population at any given time. In a species, there can be a subset that responds to changes of type XYZ more rapidly while doing about the same as the rest under usual circumstances. They aren't fully optimized to the new condition, but have characteristics that make it easier for them to reproduce than for the rest.
But I agree with you that it isn't all a matter of the body. With modern American humans there are way more contributing factors in bonding and reproductions than, say, with ground squirrels.