“What does a woman want?” and “What does a man want?” are the main questions raised by evolutionary psychology to reveal to us the secret of mating strategies in humans. They are also the exciting titles of self-improvement books that promise to unravel the mysteries of the opposite sex. Then, overcome by the curiosity of knowledge mixed with the basic need for emotional connection, you pull out one of these books, and as soon as you browse it, you are shocked by the numbers and graphs that prompt you to confirm the book’s title and subject. You open it again, to find the pages displaying pictures claiming to be “the woman that men prefer,” and “the man that women prefer,” all in the name of psychology, because a study was conducted on users of a foreign dating application and concluded this conclusion.
But the story does not end once you put the book back on the shelf, because there are those who will come after you and buy it wanting to reveal the secrets of women’s and men’s preferences. He will summarize the results of the book, translate them, and then share them on his social media accounts with all his Arab followers, ignoring the cultural and social differences among the samples studied. Now, there are simplified scientific answers removed from their contexts floating in the Internet space, canned and refrigerated answers that claim to know why women are attracted to a man’s money and men are attracted to a woman’s body.
The problem here lies in using these answers as scientific evidence of prior intellectual biases about sex and sexuality with regard to male and female gender. This is because in our conservative societies (where there is no sexual awareness), almost all of the ideas of young men and women regarding gender matters are derived from external sources. It is either wrong (such as the influence of what is known as the “male gaze” in pornographic films), or culturally inappropriate due to religion and society (such as the normalization of casual sexual practices). That is, reducing the results of evolutionary psychology studies to a group of posts on social media sites makes their conclusions vulnerable to the reader’s interpretation based on his or her cultural background. What worries us here is the incorrect scientific interpretation to confirm a wrong gender concept. For example, a young man believes that a woman’s attraction to a man’s money indicates the female’s submission to the male breadwinner, and a young woman believes that a man’s attraction to a woman’s body indicates the priority of satisfying male sexual desire.
How can we deal with mating theory and the results of evolutionary psychology studies in light of the openness of our conservative societies to the digital worlds of the Internet?
In order to answer this question, we must first understand the principles of evolutionary psychology.
“Natural selection” and Coping Mechanisms
When we think of nature, our imaginations tend to romanticize forests, seas and wilderness, the green of the trees, the blue of the ocean, the sparkle of the sand of the dunes, the sound of rain falling, the crashing of waves, and the stillness of the starry desert sky. All of these perceptions establish in our minds the concept of mother nature with its warm connotation, providing us with the means of relaxation and contemplation, and bringing us back to the authenticity of our rich and diverse planet.
But evolutionary sciences based on the theory of natural selection (survival of the fittest) have a different perception of nature and its impact on humans in ancient and modern times. From an evolutionary perspective, nature is cold and emotionless. It always pushes its children to the brink of destruction, and only those who have adapted and evolved to coexist with the dangers of their environment remain.
Examples of the process of natural selection and the formation of coping mechanisms are the “evolution of fear response” hypotheses, in which studies claim that the environmental threat of snakebite toxicity causes the development of our brains and visual perception capabilities, which has protected us from its threat to our survival and reproduction. The result is our cautious and rapid response to the mere sight or hearing of a snake. That is, the fear of snakes is a psychological mechanism that evolved to solve an environmental problem that our human ancestors faced millions of years ago, and because those who adapt and develop are the fittest and able to survive and reproduce, its mechanisms are transmitted through genetic inheritance through generations of successive eras. Modern humans fear the sight of snakes more than weapons that might threaten their lives in the modern environment. This is because they inherited the response as an inherent defense mechanism in them, despite the differences in eras and their dangers.
In the same regard, evolutionary psychologist David Buss says that we carry the coping mechanisms that led to the survival of our ancestors. That is, the various mechanisms that we inherit genetically are, in essence, successful solutions to environmental problems in previous eras. From this standpoint, the field of evolutionary psychology seeks to uncover the causal origins behind the development of the psychological mechanisms carried by humans. Thus, it establishes a scientific basis upon which explanations of the motives of human behavior are based, from feelings of jealousy to premeditated murder.
From here, the features of the scientific position of evolutionary science, specifically evolutionary psychology, become clear to us, which claims the possibility of revealing the secret of human nature from its biological composition. In this context, we are not surprised at the centrality of the question of preferences, because the evolutionary psychologist is the only one who has the courage to ask these questions and then try to answer them scientifically with numbers and graphs.
Now, let’s delve deeper into the theory of sexual selection and see how evolutionary psychology has arrived at the results of women’s and men’s preferences.
The “Parental Investment” Theory
In his reference book for academic studies, Buss opens the chapters on mating and sex preferences with a foundation in Robert Trivers’ parental investment theory. It is a theory based on the assumptions that the sex which has the greatest investment in the reproductive process (gamete size, exclusivity of pregnancy, hardship of childbirth, and breastfeeding bond) gains the right to choose a partner, while the other sex, which has less participation, must enter into conflicts with its peers to gain the opportunity to mate. Trivers and his colleagues supported these hypotheses through several studies conducted on various organisms, until animal documentaries became devoid of depictions of this mating phenomenon in insects, birds and mammals. On this theoretical basis, supported by scientific observational evidence, Buss built his hypotheses about human mating strategies as a coping mechanism that has evolved over the ages.
What Does a Woman Want?
Because the female human invests more in the reproductive process than the male – she is the one who carries the fetus for nine months, then suffers the pain of childbirth and then is associated with breastfeeding her child for several years – this gave her higher selectivity in mating throughout the history of human evolution, which in turn was reflected in her preferences as a psychological mechanism formed to solve environmental problems that threatened her life during pregnancy, the most important of which are protection and provision of resources.
The evolutionary narrative always asks us to imagine the female millions of years ago, when in her eighth month she was unable to provide food and protect herself from the danger of predators. Evolutionary psychologists argue that a woman’s preference for mates with abundant resources and strong physical attributes developed as a psychological mechanism in response to environmental conditions. They claim this selectivity arose because such males would be better able to provide for a woman during her pregnancy and childbirth, thereby increasing her chances of survival and successful reproduction. According to the principles of natural selection and genetic inheritance, these mating preferences have become deeply ingrained in the innate nature of women.
In his books and studies, Buss details that a woman’s search for security in a partner is reflected in her preference for qualities associated with solutions to her environmental problems, whether the solutions are direct or indirect. That is, a woman does not necessarily prefer a wealthy man, but rather prefers the conditions and qualities that lead to wealth, such as social status and professional ambition, because the interruption of resource provision after the male leaves represents another environmental problem, women have developed a preference for men who show signs of loyalty and continued giving. Her preference for a strong physical structure was also reflected in her attraction to masculine appearances, such as height, muscle structure, and harsh tone of voice.
There are dozens of studies that conclude that women’s selectivity has led them to search for psychological and physical details that indicate the integrity of a man’s genes, such as emotional stability and attractive facial features. Women are aware that their partner’s genes play an essential role in determining the quality of life of their offspring. A smart man will pass down his intelligence, and a strong man will pass down his strength.
What Does a Man Want?
In contrast, evolutionary psychologists paint a different picture of the environmental challenges that threaten the continuity of offspring in males. These are female-centric challenges, specifically, female fertility. The gain from male competition is not the victory in liaison, but rather the victory in fertilization. This gives fertility connotations a higher standard value when choosing a partner.
Because physiological signs appear on a woman’s body (such as the effects of puberty on secondary sexual characteristics), a man’s psychological coping mechanism has evolved to prefer these appearances as signs indicating the possibility of the woman being fertile and achieving the goal of reproduction. That is, a man’s attraction to a woman’s body is interpreted – from an evolutionary perspective – as an attraction to the body’s fertility, not its sexuality. Because the mechanism of searching for signs of fertility is what ensured the continuity of human ancestors.
Hence, Buss links connotations of fertility with standards of beauty, so that the characteristic that indicates a woman’s fertility is an aesthetic criterion that attracts a man to her. He argues that these standards are universal, as they are genetically rooted in the nature of men. Clear skin, rich, thick hair, full lips, slim waist, etc. attract all men, regardless of their personal and cultural differences.
Buss also argues that a man’s preference for a young woman is reflected in her physiological significance, as a woman’s likelihood of being fertile declines as she gets older, which reduces men’s desire for her. Several international studies have concluded the validity of this hypothesis and have supported that despite the difference in preference for age difference between husband and wife, men from all cultures of the world prefer to marry a woman younger than them.
Now, after a brief review of the most important mating hypotheses in humans, we arrive at the conclusion of the theory of sexual selection, which evolutionary psychologists claim has fundamentally contributed to shaping the nature of the sexes and their dynamic relationship over years and years of “evolution” and “counter-evolution.” When women develop a preference, men develop on this basis to compete with their peers, and so on (it has even been said that men are the result of a reproductive experiment conducted by women). It is the mating dance that extends throughout our human history. If human nature was shaped as a result of the mating dance between female and male ancestors, can we return to the moment of the first primitive tone to test the validity of the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology?
Women and Men in Primitive Societies: Proven Studies or Invented Stories?
Evolutionary psychologists complete the project of piecing together the mosaic of human nature through revealing anthropological studies of the conditions of women and men in primitive societies, specifically hunter-gatherer societies, which is where humanity witnessed the first division of labor between the sexes to organize their lives, and the social dynamic was formed leading to the creation of environmental influences that drove the development of coping mechanisms for women and men. Men’s physical strength and violent tendencies, as fundamental biological traits, compelled them to engage in high-risk activities outside the home, such as hunting and protecting the group. Conversely, women’s innate attachment to infants and children led them to pursue less hazardous practices within and around the home, such as tool-making and foraging. From this functional division between the sexes on the basis of their biological differences, some researchers went on to root the concept of “breadwinning” in the nature of the father, and the concept of “nurturing” in the nature of the mother. Thus, the traditional perceptions of the breadwinner father and the nurturing mother gain scientific legitimacy that has extended since the dawn of history according to the evolutionary interpretation.
The importance of these anthropological contexts lies in the fact that they are the basis for accepting or rejecting the evolutionary hypotheses based on them. The validity of hypotheses about psychological coping mechanisms cannot be determined by comparison to the behaviors we observe today. Instead, we must track and examine the consistency of these mechanisms with their historically extended evolutionary narrative. This means that the raw numerical results of evolutionary psychology studies do not, on their own, establish a convincing argument for revealing the secret of human nature. To make such an argument, we must rely on an evolutionary narrative that is compatible with the observed data. For example, the origin of women’s attraction to men’s money cannot be deduced from study numbers alone, but there must be an evolutionary narrative supporting them and explaining their results, otherwise, we replace the narrative of economic inequality and say that women’s attraction to men’s money is the result of years of inequality under the patriarchal system, which invalidates the hypothesis that attraction to materialism is rooted in women’s nature. This applies to all hypotheses of mating preference in both sexes.
If we look closely at the anthropological stories of hunting and gathering societies, we will find that they are multiple and conflicting, and have no fixed nature. So that the researcher can hardly choose one of them without intellectual biases filling in the blanks to formulate human nature as he wants it to be. There are studies that prove male dominance, there are studies that prove female dominance, and there are studies that prove gender equality. This “uncertainty” in historical tales undermines the objectivity of evolutionary science and places its hypotheses on the palm of a demon. In this regard, Sherwood Washburn – one of the pioneers of anthropology – says that it is preferable to consider the reconstruction of evolutionary history as a “game” rather than a “science”, due to the impossibility of achieving certainty in the validity of its hypotheses.
So, if the stories of primitive societies were too incomplete for an evolutionary psychologist to base his argument on, how could he reformulate them to promote revelation of the nature of women and men?
This Story Sounds Familiar, Where Have You Heard It Before?
The story of evolutionary psychology tells us that love does not exist in the wilderness, and the cost of development is paid by the poor man and the old woman, which implicitly indicates the importance of possessing resources and possessing power in the development of the human species and human civilization. We find self-development books based on evolutionary psychology studies that require different things from both genders. The man should be stronger and more competitive, and the woman should be softer and more exciting, because adopting these qualities guarantees wealth for men, while ensuring beauty for women, and thus guarantees success for them!
This materialistic and emotionally devoid tale feels eerily familiar. Isn’t this the quintessential capitalist narrative of human nature?
We have previously mentioned that the shortcomings of the stories of primitive societies push the researcher to support them with biased modern narratives, which turns them into fabricated evidence proving the legitimacy of the researcher’s intellectual orientations under the name: “the evolutionary nature of man.” If the researcher believes in capitalist values, human nature becomes capitalist. This is what the American writer Louis Menand meant when he described evolutionary psychology as “a philosophy for the victors,” as it can be used to legitimize any outcome.
In order to prove this issue, we must first examine the similarities between:
1- The anthropological narrative in the first primitive societies, as mentioned in the reference books of evolutionary psychology.
2-The capitalist narrative in the first industrial societies, as mentioned in post-industrial social studies.
- The breadwinning father
1-The father leaves his house before sunrise, heading to the forest, and does not return to his family until midday, carrying his huge, bloody prey on his shoulder.
2- The father leaves his house before sunrise, heading to the factory outside the city, and does not return to his family until midday, carrying their supplies and needs.
- The nurturing mother
1- The mother spends her day within the confines of her residence, taking care of her children, managing their affairs, and participating in gardening.
2- The mother spends her day at home, taking care of her children, managing their affairs, and participating in textile manufacturing.
This narrative similarity extending across the ages is what the evolutionary researcher infers to reveal the nature of the gender roles of men and women. That is, he sees gender as a biological value inherent in every man and woman before it is a social construct influenced by culture. He says that this is the nature of the sexes as shaped by natural selection, not the patriarchal or capitalist system, or consumer culture and Western media. He argues theoretically for the historical precedence of his anthropological narrative. In other words, the evolutionary researcher uses the logic of “survival of the fittest” to pass on the values of capitalism by rooting them in human nature, and then links the validity of his hypotheses to the success of the capitalist model (the rich man is surrounded by women, and the attractive woman is surrounded by men). So, what is the clear message that evolutionary psychology has for young men and women? “Be rich and consume cosmetics, because no one likes the poor and the ugly.” This message, with its biting and sarcastic tone, could belong on the pages of the novel “American Psycho,” and it is no wonder because it is a novel written to depict the madness of consumer culture and the emptiness of emotion under the capitalist system.
Here, as we mentioned in the previous section, the researcher falls into the trap of intellectual bias. What prompted him to choose this anthropological narrative over another? Simply because this is the only narrative that conforms to and maintains the social structure. Evolutionary psychology studies are the scientific cover that legitimizes the conditions of the sexes in society and justifies stereotypes of females and males. In her book The Creation of Patriarchy, historian Gerda Lerner summarizes everything she mentioned by saying: “When Darwinian theory dominated historical thought, pre-history was seen as a “barbaric” stage in the evolutionary progress of humankind from the simpler to the more complex. That which succeeded and survived was by the very fact of its survival considered superior to that which vanished and had thus “failed.” As long as androcentric assumptions dominated our interpretations, we read the sex/gender arrangements prevailing in the present backward into the past.” The evolutionary researcher’s certainty about the validity of their hypotheses stems from the way they reconstruct narratives – starting from the present and working backward to the past. He then asserts that this approach reflects human nature since the dawn of history.
Now, after we have removed the anthropological narrative of the conditions of women and men in the first primitive societies, we are left with the story of industrial society as the point of formation of gender roles from which the evolutionary researcher departs into the past. The Industrial Revolution reshaped the concepts of femininity and masculinity based on the requirements of the new world. A capitalist world, in which evolutionary psychology tried to hide under the shadow of human nature.
How Did the Industrial Revolution Reshape Stereotypes of Women and Men?
In the century extending from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, industrial transformation affected many sectors in Europe, which in turn created many jobs inside and outside factories, at the same time it eliminated small family businesses competing in the market, which prompted men to leave their homes in order to seize opportunities and earn a living in this renewed world. In this revolutionary phase, the capitalist system encouraged men to possess the qualities that would guarantee their survival in coal mines and mineral forests, such as discipline, productivity, and mastery, and to engage in competitions that drive economic development in society. With the formation of this competitive capitalist environment, it became necessary for men of the Victorian era to reform the standards of aristocratic masculinity that had been inherited from the Georgian era, where men did not hide their emotions and reveal their transgressions like women, but this belief is no longer acceptable to men in the era of capitalist competition, where emotion indicates weakness, and weakness leads to loss.
This revolutionary transformation was reflected in the structure of the family in terms of concept and values, and marital roles were reshaped on the basis of the requirements and variables of capitalist society. With the husband going out to work, the wife found herself forced to stay at home to manage his affairs, including raising the children and managing the family business or what was left of it, such as the textile industry. This change in the paternal role within the family after his departure from the home and the transfer of his internal authority to the mother – albeit temporarily in front of the children – prompted nineteenth-century men to redefine masculinity in a way that ensured the survival of the authority of the patriarchal system in light of the threat of social changes.
This is what happened at the beginning of the century with the concept of “providing for the family,” which became more deeply rooted conceptually than it had previously been in the role of the breadwinning father. The Industrial Revolution replaced the need for manual skill among workers, which both sexes had mastered to an equal extent, with the need for physical strength in handling heavy machinery and working in ports, mines, and construction sites. The basic physical requirement for performing heavy labor went beyond the biological gender differences between men and women to generational differences as well, as elderly people who were weak were kept away, and young men were put into work early. This transformation in industrial age adolescence had an educational impact on upbringing based on the stereotypical gender image of males and females, by preparing the boy from his childhood for the role of the breadwinning father and preparing the girl from her youth for the role of the nurturing mother, until this family image imbued with masculine values was imprinted in the imagination of the Western mind over the years (The Bourgeois Century). What began as a need for physical strength at the beginning of the century gradually transformed into a misogynistic male dominance of the professional and educational sectors by its end. Men pushed the narrative of rational male superiority at the expense of emotional female inferiority in order to preserve the gender hierarchy of patriarchy against the feminist rights movements that emerged in the 1870s and 1880s.
This anti-feminist position in its attack on the authority of patriarchy was a prevalent position among neurologists in the nineteenth century. They are those who emerged from the middle class of society, influenced by the bourgeois values of gender concepts, where the stereotype of the emotional woman is compatible with her maternal function and nothing more. And overwhelming emotion is a sign of a woman’s weakness, which doctors of that era interpreted as a deficiency in the development of her nervous system compared to men.
Here the similarity between the neurologist in the nineteenth century and the evolutionary psychologist in the twenty-first century becomes clear to us. They work to root gender roles in the nature of women and men, either in their nervous systems or genetic makeup, so that the division of roles is legitimized on the basis of the biological origin of the sexes, and to ensure the continuity of the social structure in a way that serves the capitalist system and consumer culture.
The young woman’s attraction to the wealthy man is not innate, but rather a product of the societal norms that tie a woman’s rights to a male provider – first her father, then her husband. Similarly, the young man’s preference for a specific physical appearance is not inherent, but rather shaped by cultural standards of beauty. Therefore, it is the cultural environment, not genetic makeup, that determines an individual’s partner preferences. This shifts the discussion from the “certainty” of evolutionary psychology to the “uncertainty” of individual preferences – moving away from declaring “this is what the woman wants” to the more nuanced question of “is this what the woman wants?”
Criticism of Biological Determinism… We Are Not Just Hormones
At this stage of the article, after having extensively criticized the foundations of evolutionary psychology narratives, we emphasize that our criticism of the hypotheses does not mean rejecting them completely. There are differences between males and females, but what we reject are interpretive narratives when they inevitably root differences in the nature of the sexes. That is, the masculinity associated with violence, and the femininity associated with emotion, is not an inevitable result determined by the biological structure of males and females, but rather is the result of the interaction of this structure with the cultural environment that enhances male violence and female emotion, which indicates the effect of gender stereotypes in shaping what is claimed to be the nature of the sexes. Therefore, we must dismantle these stereotypes made on the basis of gender division (the breadwinning father and the nurturing mother), and the resulting inequality in women’s rights, and then reconstitute them on the basis of equality that rejects biological determinism in the stereotypical image of women and men.
This will enable us to isolate notions of inevitable gender-related behavior, such as: “Boys will be boys,” and to criticize justifications for reckless behavior by boys when it is seen as a result of the influence of testosterone. Hormones affect behavior, but not inevitably, rather, the societal culture of “boys will be boys” is the biggest influence in this equation, because the young man will believe that the dynamic of his relationship with women is based on his reckless impulsiveness due to his masculine nature. This mentality gains its behavioral motivation from the illusion of “certainty” in knowing what a woman wants, and the feeling of “entitlement” to be attracted to him. It is the most dangerous conceptual mixture and the cause of harassing behavior.
Accept the “Uncertainty” and Get Rid of the Feeling of “Entitlement”
The importance of accepting uncertainty is that it is a disinhibiting force for intimate/sexual interpretation in the dynamics of relationships between men and women. This male psychological tendency leads some men to interpret women’s non-intimate and asexual behaviors as an invitation to intimacy and sexuality. Her smile and friendly conversations may be interpreted as an emotional overture, prompting the man to engage in harmful behaviors such as throwing out bold words, sharing erotic photos without prior consent, practicing intrusive surveillance, etc. Here comes the role of uncertainty in destroying the motivation behind harassing behavior. Men must accept it and adopt the culture of questioning and requesting “consent” to reach certainty. At the same time, they have to struggle with the sense of “entitlement” inherited from male culture. Wealth, social status, physical structure, and other qualities do not allow a man to be deserving of anything from a woman, and this is what creates in a man who is ecstatic about his entitlement a feeling of rage that may push him to harm the woman who rejected him.
We are talking here about a behavioral phenomenon that we see repeatedly in the streets and on the Internet. It is the intellectual legacy of patriarchal culture that has been lenient in criticizing the motives of harassment rooted in gender concepts. Concepts we may find hidden in studies of evolutionary psychology and in books claiming to know “What do women want?” and “What do men want?”
References:
- Buss, David. Evolutionary Psychology, Sixth Edition.
- Buss, David. The Evolution of Desire.
- Buss, David. When Men Behave Badly.
- Shlain, Leonard. Sex, Time, And Power.
- Menand, Louis. What Comes Naturally.
- Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy.
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