{"id":28,"date":"2010-11-02T20:53:44","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T20:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2010-11-02T20:54:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T20:54:01","slug":"all-human-sexuality-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/11\/02\/all-human-sexuality-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"All human sexuality explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many readers will know, Stephen Fry got himself into trouble recently when an interview was published in which he is quoted as making various observations about the natures of male and female, gay and straight sexuality. The interview is not currently available online, but if you wish to read extracts from it, then try The Guardian\u2019s coverage<\/a> for less than total hysteria.<\/p>\n

The outcry over this has driven Fry off Twitter (again<\/a>)\u00a0and everyone is now weighing in with their own opinion. As ever, this debate boils down to the following trite observation \u2013 men and women, taken as groups, differ in some respects but not in others. Thus, those looking for a fight can make lengthy lists of the differences and rubbish those who emphasise the similarities, or can play down the differences and give endless examples of similarities instead.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t believe Fry\u2019s personal musings should be cause for alarm or criticism. They were offered in no way as the last word on the subject, despite his possibly rather conclusive tone, and notwithstanding his subsequent claims to have been misquoted. And they seem on their face to be perfectly fair enough. It is a readily observable fact that gay men find anonymous sexual encounters easy to come by with no need to for money to change hands. That, further, while the world is crawling with prostitutes and rent-boys, the number of straight male escorts is vanishingly small (although there\u2019s no shortage of straight men who would volunteer to earn a living in this way). That Playgirl magazine, launched at the height of the women\u2019s lib movement and marketed to straight women is in fact read largely by gay men. Why should not a gay man venture some speculations as to the nature and cause of these obvious differences? Especially one whose non-professional opinion is eagerly sought on a very wide range of other topics \u2013 literary, musical, technological, cultural, sartorial, zoological \u2013 almost no subject is out-of-bounds where Stephen Fry is concerned, except for female sexuality apparently.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t take the brain of Stephen Fry to detect the obvious difference between the sexes which emerges after even the most cursory examination of the evidence, and which no list of thoughtful similarities will do anything to dispel. Men and women certainly do tend to process the world of sex and sexuality differently. In this post, I will attempt to give an explanation of why this is so, drawn from several different pieces of research, documentaries, pop science books and lectures I have consumed over the years. Regrettably, I find myself unable to footnote any of this very extensively, but if anyone really wants to take me on, then let\u2019s head to the comments and\/or the library. Most of this is logic, observation and common sense anyway. Let\u2019s start from first principles.<\/p>\n

Preparatory notion 1.<\/strong> Men and women are different and similar and diverse<\/strong><\/p>\n

For much of the rest of this blog post, I am going to be talking about men and women as groups, types or Platonic Ideals. But it\u2019s perhaps necessary to acknowledge that a human man and a human woman will no doubt have far more in common than a human (of either sex) and a chimp. Or indeed, a dolphin, a racoon, a banana or a bicycle. It\u2019s not that these similarities between humans don\u2019t exist, they simply aren\u2019t my topic for today.<\/p>\n

And both groups are also terribly diverse. It\u2019s certainly possible to identify women whose behaviour sounds much more like the prototypical male I am describing, or vice-versa. I\u2019m not suggesting that each group is entirely homogenous, and that any particular man or woman you happen to meet (or be) is guaranteed to perfectly exemplify whatever behaviour I am claiming for that group. I am claiming, however, that certain behaviours are much more typically found in men than women, or the other way round, and I don\u2019t want the presence of outliers to distract us from the interesting conclusions we can draw about the great majority, somewhere in the middle of the bell-curve. Once again, it\u2019s not that these outliers don\u2019t exist or aren\u2019t interesting \u2013 it\u2019s just that they aren\u2019t whom I wish to write about today.<\/p>\n

Preparatory notion 2. The mind evolved<\/strong><\/p>\n

The field of evolutionary psychology is excitingly controversial, although those who oppose the very idea of it, often seem to be to be attacking a straw man (as in this debate between Stevens Pinker and Rose<\/a>). No serious researcher is taking the field to the absurd excesses described by those who seek to denigrate this approach, and like any scientist, evolutionary psychologists are free to speculate, while being careful to separate such speculation from evidenced conclusions.<\/p>\n

But the basic idea that the mind evolved can hardly be denied. Tiny kittens play-fight to discover how to defend themselves and catch prey, but this play-fighting is instinctive, not taught to them. Birds hatch with all the required muscle co-ordination for flight and don\u2019t require the blank slate of their brains to be written on by an extensive programme of schooling. Human infants learn to talk even when exposed to primitive and incomplete versions of what will become their native language, as in the deaf children of hearing parents who effortlessly turn the clumsy signs of the adults closest to them into the full linguistic richness of British Sign Language (or whichever).<\/p>\n

Although humans are blessed with an extra capacity for general reasoning and abstract thought, compared to other animals, nevertheless much of what we do remains instinctive, unconscious and shaped by billions of years of evolution, rather than a few thousand years of culture. Thus we crave foods rich in salt, fat and sugar because moderate quantities of these things are essential to our survival, and they were not always easy to come by in the African savannah. If we failed to prioritise acquiring them, or passed up opportunities to consume them, we tended to be outcompeted by those that did. These being instinctive actions, shaped and promoted (though not actually controlled moment-to-moment) by our genetic makeup, a proclivity for aggressive consumption of salt, fat and sugar became the norm in the population.<\/p>\n

Today, when foods high in salt, fat and sugar are readily available (at least in some parts of the world), this adaptation is no longer such a benefit, but evolution shapes us only slowly. We\u2019ve needed salt to survive for hundreds of millions of years, but McDonalds has been in business for only a few decades.<\/p>\n

Humans evolved around a million years ago. Hominids around 15 million years ago. Primates around 75 million years ago. Mammals about 250 million years ago. Tetrapods around 400 million years ago. Vertebrates 500 million years ago.<\/p>\n

Sex evolved about a billion years ago.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019ve been boy and girl for almost as long as we\u2019ve been anything at all. It\u2019s not inconceivable that evolution might have shaped male and female brains differently, given a billion years in which to work. But we\u2019ll come back to men and women once we\u2019ve considered another more general point. We are now ready to begin asking some serious questions about sex and sexuality.<\/p>\n

Question 1. How do we choose our mates?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evolution isn\u2019t only about survival of the fittest (which itself doesn\u2019t survival of the strongest, or healthiest \u2013 \u201cfit\u201d in this sense means suitable or most fitting to the environment). Not just natural selection, the weeding out of the least fit, but sexual selection plays an important part. The price for sex (no we\u2019re not still talking about rent boys and hookers) is that by reproducing sexually, I only get to pass on half of my genes. So I need to be pretty careful that my super-duper genes aren\u2019t being dragged down by your inferior ones. Thus we get careful choosing of mates, display behaviour and phenomena like peacock\u2019s tails. A peacock doesn\u2019t need an elaborate tail for its own survival \u2013 quite the reverse, they are cumbersome and cost energy to maintain. But a peacock who can sustain this preposterous plumage must be, in general, a superior specimen, blessed with a robust constitution, excellent health and fitness and bags of stamina, at least some of which may be genetic in origin. Thus a discerning peahen who prefers to mate with the larger-tailed gentleman will find more of her genes in the next generation, whereas those who seek out the tiny-tailed may discover that the next generation is bereft of her genetic bounty since her offspring suffered from the same lazy attitude, heart condition or inherited disease as their dad.<\/p>\n

Note that none of this is mentally considered by the peahen. It is simply a fact that because peahens who prefer to mate with big-tailed males have a greater genetic influence on the next generation, so \u00a0necessarily, the next generation contains a higher percentage of peahens who get turned on by big tails.<\/p>\n

Quite obviously, even as sophisticated adult humans, with all our language and culture and technology, we also have mate preferences that we didn\u2019t decide for ourselves, but simply woke up with aged about 10. And while it (once again) isn\u2019t true that there is a single monolithic standard of beauty or attractiveness, patterns do emerge and so Marilyn Monroe is generally feted for her beauty whereas Bella Emberg received such compliments less frequently.<\/p>\n

But even if we ignore the problem of establishing a global standard for attractiveness, we can still accept that people tend to rate people they meet in terms of how attractive they are \u2013 and we need not limit ourselves to physical beauty. A potential mate may strike you as attractive because of their power, charm, vulnerability, sense of humour, kindness, personal wealth, liking for adventure, exotic accent or any one of a number of other reasons. But, if forced to, you could give any person of the appropriate sex whom you happened to meet a rating on an imagined desirability scale. So if you should want a global measure, you can think of this as the average across all potential mates.<\/p>\n

Sexual selection tells us that in the game of mating, those whose combined desirability scores are the highest are going to be those who most influence the next generation\u2019s gene pool, and so evolutionary theory tells us that behaviour which tends to lead to this outcome will be selected-for and so come to dominate. That leads us to\u2026<\/p>\n

Thought experiment 1. The ice rink<\/strong><\/p>\n

You are one of twenty players (sexes are not relevant for the purposes of this game) who will shortly be let loose on an ice rink. It doesn\u2019t have to be an ice rink, but freedom of movement is key. Each of you wears a number on your back, allowing you to be ranked in order from 1 to 20. Numbers have been assigned randomly and secretly, so \u2013 although you can see clearly what number somebody else wearing, you cannot see and do not know your own designation.<\/p>\n

The game is to find someone who will agree to leave the ice-rink with you, holding your hand, and the aim is for each pair to attempt to maximise their combined score. So a 9 who leaves the rink holding hands with a 5 will score 14, but will be beaten by an 8 who leaves the rink holding hands with a 11. You can change your mind as often as you wish and the time limit is fairly generous so no-one is making any snap decisions.<\/p>\n

The game begins. What is your strategy? The obvious (and correct) strategy is to immediately start looking for number 20. Regardless of what number is on your own back, nothing will give you a higher score than leaving with number 20 in tow. Pretty soon number 20 is spotted and quickly has a great many potential partners. There\u2019s a 1:20 chance in fact that this will be you. So let\u2019s assume it is \u2013 you are busily looking out for number 20 when you gradually realise that everyone else has come looking for you. You are number 20! Who are you now looking for? Well, the best score you can possibly get will now be 39, provided you can find number 19. So number 19 now becomes the only<\/span> person whose hand you are willing to hold. 19 eagerly agrees to hold your hand, and you both happily leave the ice rink having won the game. But the game isn\u2019t over yet.<\/p>\n

Once 19 and 20 are paired off, all attention naturally switches to number 18, who is now the best prize available. Number 18 will now only accept the advances of number 17, and so on. By starting with the rule \u201cmaximise your combined score\u201d we end up with everybody pairing up with the closest number to them.<\/p>\n

Answer to question 1. People choose as their mate the most attractive person who will accept them.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, \u201cattractive\u201d is assumed to have a multiplicity of meanings, but this complexity doesn\u2019t change the fact that we find some people more \u201cattractive\u201d than others \u2013 even if we couldn\u2019t give a very satisfactory definition of \u201cattractive\u201d even when asked. And because we both seek and select, we reject people if we think we can do better, but set our sights as high as we dare. In life, unlike in the ice rink game, we get a sense of our own level of attractiveness (even if, or especially if, this changes over our lifetime) and so don\u2019t bother approaching those way out of our league because the risk of rejection is suicidally great. When we encounter pairs who appear to buck this trend, they tend to be figures who attract startled comment. \u201cWhat does she see in him?\u201d and so on. This is precisely because they are outliers and not the norm.<\/p>\n

Preparatory notion 3. Game theory can help us understand human psychology<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evolution finds solutions that \u201cwork\u201d, where \u201cwork\u201d in this sense can be taken to mean \u201cincreases the representation of those genes in the gene pool of the next generation\u201d. Evolution in this sense is circular. Natural selection means survival of the fittest. What does \u201cfittest\u201d mean? Those who tend to survive. But if a subtly different shape of fin, a different trade-off in heart construction, or a thicker, shaggier coat creates a survival advantage, then over generations, a population of organisms will shift in that direction. Evolution tests countless tiny variations on the currently best designs and \u2013 especially if the environment changes \u2013 discards the ones which don\u2019t help and retains the ones that do. It isn\u2019t guaranteed to find perfectly optimal solutions, and if the environment changes very rapidly then evolution may not be swift enough, but when it works, this is how it works.<\/p>\n

In just the same way, when it comes to sexual selection, evolution can generate variations on brain construction which give rise to different psychologies which give rise to different strategies. Those strategies which tend to maximise inclusive fitness<\/span> \u2013 in other words those which don\u2019t only aid survival for this individual organism but which contribute to their ability to genetically dominate future generations \u2013 will be selected for. But note that even homo sapiens is not granted a psychological makeup which is explicitly and consciously focused on inclusive fitness maximising. If it were the case that, for example, men were consciously focused on maximising their genetic representation in the next generation, that most men would be ferociously keen to donate to as many sperm banks as possible as often as possible \u2013 but this is not a solution which evolution could plausibly find. We would expect men to enjoy orgasm however, and this they generally do.<\/p>\n

Of course, sex and reproduction is only worthwhile if you live long enough and so other forces come in to play. Some male mammals (although no females as far as I know) will eat their own young if food is scarce. The calculation (not performed consciously of course) is that if I eat my kids today, I can father lots more offspring when there\u2019s enough food to go around. But if I don\u2019t, I\u2019ll die now leaving only this litter, who will probably die themselves. Layered on top of all of these evolved, primal, psychological forces are more recent, subtler drivers such as the need for acceptance, social status and so on, not to mention a whole other wealth of cultural, societal and fashionable forces which also act upon us, and all of that is without even mentioning all of the personal preferences which make us unique.<\/p>\n

But game theory \u2013 the mathematical study of what tactics are most likely to lead to success given certain rules to play by \u2013 can certainly be employed to allow us to discover how evolution might have shaped this part of our mind. We can then look at human societies and behavioural norms and come to some conclusions about how many of these primal needs are preserved, and how many are muffled or eradicated altogether.<\/p>\n

And here we must \u2013 for the first time \u2013 start considering men and women differently, instead of considering evolution, psychology, mate-selection and sex-differences simply as phenomena.<\/p>\n

Question 2. What is a man\u2019s best mate-selection strategy for maximising inclusive fitness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the mind evolved, and since the mind evolved under this kind of selection pressure, we can be fairly sure that most men will be seeking a mate who is the most attractive person who will accept him. But maximising inclusive fitness doesn\u2019t only mean finding a life partner. The potential cost of sex to a man is very little. He will never have to bear the child through pregnancy and the time which elapses between conception and birth may very well mean that he is no longer conveniently at hand to raise the child, or possibly no longer identifiable as the genetic father. But like a gambler with an unlimited bankroll, there is no reason for him not to keep rolling the dice again and again and again. Given the choice between having sex with number 18 and having sex with number 11, regardless of what number is on his own back, he would prefer number 18. But he\u2019ll cheerfully have sex with number 11 if no-one else is around.<\/p>\n

For men, promiscuity makes sense. Why would you not have sex whenever possible, provided you are still eating enough and providing a decent enough shelter to ensure that you will still be fit and healthy enough to have more sex tomorrow? There is no cost and from an evolutionary point of view, it\u2019s an easy (and fun!) way to out-compete less eager rivals.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but it\u2019s also easy to see why men would prefer to have lots of sex with lots of different partners, rather than settling down with just one straight away and raising a family. All that time spent looking after your first child is time you could be spending anonymously fathering dozens more.<\/p>\n

Question 3. What is a woman\u2019s best mate-selection strategy for maximising inclusive fitness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For women, however, the picture is vastly different. There is a tremendous potential cost for a woman in having sex with a man. This cost is twofold. Firstly, if she becomes pregnant, she will have six-nine months of discomfort, followed by many years of expending energy in childcare (this is a potential cost for a man too, as mentioned, but an all-but guaranteed cost for a woman).\u00a0 The second cost is more subtle. Gestating this<\/span> baby is a missed opportunity to gestate the baby of another man. Thus, because she wants her genes to be given the best possible advantage in the next generation, she will strongly prefer to have babies only with the most attractive men available.<\/p>\n

Now, this is all very well if you are number 20. You simply wait for number 19 to come along, refuse to have sex with him until you have some way of forcing him to stick around and share the burden of childcare with you and give birth to a series of prodigious wonder-children.<\/p>\n

But what about the rest of the population? You might imagine that the ice-rink experiment teaches us that number 12s just have to settle for living with and raising children with number 11 or number 13, but a better strategy exists for the female of the species. The possible lack of certainty about paternity here works in the woman\u2019s favour. The very best strategy for all but the most desirable female is to find the most attractive male who will accept her, and then get him to help bring up the child which she gives birth to after having had sex with a much more attractive man.<\/p>\n

Question 4. What evidence do we see of this in the modern human world?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This trio of observations \u2013 men and women each seek the most attractive person who will accept them, men favour promiscuity over a stable relationship, women need both a helpmate and a genetic mate but they don\u2019t have to be one-and-the-same \u2013 unlocks a tremendous amount of human sexual activity, even though almost nobody actually gives totally free reign to these desires. From these observations we should expect to see \u2013 and do see\u2026<\/p>\n