“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy” wrote Nietzsche’s fictional prophet Zarathustra. His sermon, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, sought to strip back moralistic narratives about humanity to reveal the self-aggrandising animal underneath.
When it comes to the mistreatment of women by men, a lot of progressive hopes for social improvement could do with a similarly hard headed stripping back to raw naturalistic impulses. Evolutionary psychologist David Buss attempts just that in his new book “Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception”.
In Bad Men, Buss seeks to explain the “battle of the sexes” through an understanding of the influence of evolutionary forces on our psyches. His narrative will be familiar to anyone with even a passing understanding of the evo-psych literature.
Men and women differ in the “mating strategies” instilled in us due to the pressures of deep evolutionary time. Men, who carry small gametes, need to spread their seed widely to ensure the best success - this incentivises a desire for novelty and frequent sexual encounters. Women, who carry large gametes and have the unfortunate privilege of bearing children, must be more careful and selective in their mate choice, lest they waste time raises inferior offspring.
Evolutionary psychologists love broad generalisations about human nature, claims easy to critique given the wide variation of behaviours across cultures and history.
Buss understands this weakness, and hedges his bets by prefacing every broad statement about sexual desire and partner choice in Bad Men with an allowance for the uniqueness of individuals: “all statements about sex differences in this book carry the always-necessary qualifier of ‘on average’ ” he reassures.
Unfortunately, Buss retains too much faith in explanatory models fit for insects to humans, intellectually advanced primates who are - in the words of Gérard Wajcman - sick with language.
It’s hard not to roll one’s eyes when Buss opens a section in his first Chapter on “sexual conflict” with “[c]onsider a spider from the family Pisaura mirabilis…”.
For Buss, differences in mating strategies between the sexes don’t just explain the differing (on average) sex drives between men and women but a whole hosts of other “sexual conflicts” from the minor violation of being ghosted on a dating app to the horrible crimes of stalking and rape:
Traits beneficial to the reproductive success of individuals of one sex can damage individuals of the other sex, resulting in coevolutionary arms race of offences and defences.
Readers hoping for a well justified tackling of widely diverse topics of gender conflict will be left wanting, as everything for Buss comes back to the same evolutionary model of mating preferences by gamete size.
Women getting more matches on Tinder? “Female choosiness” vs male promiscuity. Sexual jealousy? An example of “mate guarding”. Domestic violence? A strategy against “mate poachers”. College rape? It’s all about sex ratios, “female surplus” and “mate choice”.
The evidence cited to support repeated banging of this evolutionary hammer involves a a classic cherry picking of non replicated experiments in social psychology.
Evolutionary psychologists have been rather slow to respond to the challenge of the replication crisis, with Bad Men littered with isolated studies rather than meta analysis or systematic reviews. Buss is keen to put the narrative utility of research over its quality.
However, even the “just so” story Buss is attempting to apply to sexual difference reflects an overly robotic understanding of human behaviour:
“Women often require more time than men to accurately assess the other’s mate value. Qualities that enter into the calculus of a man’s mate value – his attentiveness, status trajectory, dependability, health, sense of humor, existing commitments, family ties and genetic quality – require more than a glance to accurately evaluate.”
Amirite ladies?
Buss’ rhetoric may be convincing to highly analytical individuals (read: science nerds) who like to map out human interactions through a series of data points, but it all comes off as incredibly inhuman (even anti-human) to anyone with even a passing degree of social competence.
Buss in particular has trouble with understanding the social nuances of sexual violence.
Given the distinct advantage of sexual coercion for evolutionary success, it seems rather baffling that the vast majority of men aren’t notorious sexual predators. Buss counteracts this by noting the benefits of pro-social attitudes for being an ideal mate, noting that male sexual predatory behaviour is a result a small group of men who exhibit “Dark Triad” personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
However, how and why a small group of men exhibit “Dark Triad” features isn’t discussed in Bad Men despite being a flourishing area of research. Doing so, might reveal a complex interplay of biology with social environment that messes up his simplistic tale of human nature and “mate choice”.
Identifying the personality characteristics of male sexual offenders and identifying opportunities for social intervention, is proving quite useful for the broader goal of violence prevention in criminology. However, these interventions aren’t aided by Buss’ one note insight of“men be horny, but women less so”.
There’s no denying that the evo-psych model of atavistic psyches locking men and women into a persistent tet-a-tet of pursuit and rejection, seduction and revenge is quite appealing. Tellingly, it’s quite sexy.
In this sense there’s a meta-textual insight to Bad Men, even if its contents are irritatingly simplistic.
Maybe the human animal is less driven by pre-programmed “mating strategies” and more drives which gain pleasure in symbolic interplays of domination and submission. The description of a female spider consuming her male paramour which opens Bad Men is likely a poor analogy for modern human sexual relations, but has undeniable erotic appeal.
Grand narratives of sex difference are important to both understand ourselves and those we love, but naturalistic insights require understanding the human animal in all its complexity - not as arachnids in a Petri dish.