Desire and DNA: Is Promiscuity Innate?

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Has anyone read this article that was in the Washington Post? It is about a study that was done by a professor at Bradley University to find out whether the sexes differ in the desire for sexual variety (basically does one sex desire sex more than the other).

The study generally states that the idea of male promiscuity is hardwired and therefore "normal." It has ben rebutted by many learned detractors, mostly women, hmmmm....

So what do you guys think? Here is a link to the article which was originally submitted to the Post.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/946836.asp

 

[BobbDobbs]

Psychology tends to be normative. It measures what is statistically average, and then calls that normal. It then advocates normalcy.

Advocacy is a bad idea for "science." Advocacy is the realm of religion, philosophy and politics.

The closing line in the article about "bad behavior" is a personal subjective value judgement, not a scientific statement.

So the issue of whether promiscuity is genetic or cultural or even individual choice doesn't really alter whether it is "bad" or "good."

It is up to the individual to decide such questions. No such answer will be found in any scientific discovery.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Out of curiosity, what did you think about the other study that implied that women won't admit to having a high interest in sex unless their anonymity is assured?

 

[BobbDobbs]

Not very surprising.

I was also interested in the study that came out a few months ago that showed that female interest in "nice guy" versus "bad boy" varied with the phase of her montly cycle. When she was fertile, she found manly characteristics more appealing. During the rest of her cycle she found effeminate characteristics more appealing.

Women will seek out the bad boy for sex, and then have the nice guy help bring up baby.

 

[dietzcoi]

I has also been said that up to 10% to 30% (!) of all children have different fathers than they think, ie the woman got pregnant by one guy and let Mr. AFC raise and pay for the child.

If that does not make you think, I don't know what does.

Dietzcoi

 

[Quick]

Originally posted by dietzcoi
I has also been said that up to 10% to 30% (!) of all children have different fathers than they think, ie the woman got pregnant by one guy and let Mr. AFC raise and pay for the child.

If that does not make you think, I don't know what does.

Dietzcoi

That was one of the original reasons of marriage. The girl had to come to it a virgin, and he would be the only guy she ever slept with. Marriage was a good way to avoid a man having to raise someone else's child.

 

[Oscar Wilde]

See also Allen & Barbara Pease's books, talk about this.

 

[Deep Dish]

Something which never made it into the final draft of my post "Book of Woman"...

From “Essays On Social Psychology”
http://users.erols.com/gberry/socpsych/socpsychessays.htm

SECORD, P.F.: Love, misogyny, and feminism in selected historical period: A social-psychological explanation.

Merton and Stinchcombe asserted that in making choices, individuals choose "between socially structured alternatives." For those of us who may have wondered what this means, the Secord piece provides an illustration. In examining the relationship between men and women in a number of countries with high and low ratios of men to women, Secord came upon an interesting phenomenon: whereas the way men related to women seemed to vary systematically with the sex-ratio (the value and respect accorded women was positively related to the ratio of men to women), the way women related to men seemed to be unaffected by the sex-ratio. When they outnumbered women, the men wanted to settle down and become good husbands and fathers; but when there was an excess of women, the men felt the need to play in the field where they could sow wild oats. Women, on the other hand, didn't experience a similar Jeckyll and Hyde transformation. The question is why not.

As Secord explains, it is not that women are less adept than men in using their favorable position to gain maximum advantage. Rather, it is because men have two power resources, but women have only one. "Dyadic" power, borrowed from social exchange theory, pertains to the power that one party to a relationship has over the other. Both men and women, in principle, possess this type of power. In fact, when men are in the preferred position, this is the power source that men use to extract concessions from women. But when women have the upper hand, or dyadic power, men change the rules of the games and employ their "structural" power to overcome the dyadic power of women. Structural power is vastly superior to dyadic power since the latter exists only between the parties to the immediate relationship. Structural power, on the other hand, operates on the entire system of economic, political, legal, moral, and social arrangements in which any particular dyadic relationship takes place. Structural power includes the power to define what is good and evil, right and wrong, proper and inappropriate.

I wasn't sure on my own what the findings meant, so hence it was scrapped.