Or so says the National Review. I remain confused about why I should give a fuck.
The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the rarity of the converse.
The conventional biological wisdom is what now? In a world that includes femdom hyenas, mpreg seahorses, octopus orgies, slutty bonobos, ducks with anti-rape vaginas, and a thousand other polymorphously perverse species, I think you’re going to need some serious evidence to claim that there’s a single thing that animals of one gender in all species select for. Also, on a purely logical level, men can be infertile too, surely women would evolve to like a fertile man?
Also, there’s a major confounding variable here. The reason women tend to select for wealthy older men is that for hundreds of years, because women were incapable of working, whether you married an established man was the difference between poverty and a comfortable living. (Not to mention that women didn’t tend to get to pick their own husband for a very, very long time.) Now that women have their own money, there’s a niche for Pretty But Poor men (see also: “guitarist”) and, most of all, people tend to marry people who are part of their own demographic. Baristas tend to marry baristas, and lawyers tend to marry lawyers.
Ellen Kullman is a very pretty woman, but at 56 years of age she probably would not turn a lot of heads in a college bar, and the fact that she is the chairman and CEO of Dupont isn’t going to change that.
Question: how many male CEOs will turn heads at the local college bar? Answer: not fucking many, except among those looking for someone to pay off their student loans. I’m just saying, as a college student, all the women I know who have dated significantly older men were less likely to date CEOs and more likely to date librarians.
It is a curious scientific fact (explained in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard, notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap.
But, uh, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis doesn’t actually hold true in humans. Higher-status humans tend to have more male offspring, but lower-status humans tend to have either an equal number of male and female offspring or more men. Many cultures makes female offspring essentially worthless– they weren’t valued culturally, they wouldn’t carry on the family name, once they married off they wouldn’t be around to take care of you when you’re old, you had to find a dowry for them, et cetera. In other words: humans are an intensely cultural species! That happens.
Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.
Arrrrrggggghhh you cannot generalize from a rule that holds true across thousands if not millions of cases to talk about two people for fuck’s saaaaaaaaaake.
We don’t do harems here, of course, but Romney is exactly the kind of guy who in another time and place would have the option of maintaining one.
…Like Noah Brand?
Mreh, the rest of this is pretty boring. “Waaaaah why is Romney flying coach he is RICH and rich people need to flaunt their superiority over us, he’s super-better than Obama because Obama is a fag who writes books instead of doing hostile takeovers like RMONEY,women need to vote for RMONEY because rich people make their ladyparts tingle, in fact if he flaunted his wealth everyone would vote for him because they all share my wank fantasies about being dominated by a super-rich alpha male.”
It’s Success Myth masculinity-policing bullshit.
You know what? I don’t care if my president is a member of the .001% or just the 1%. I don’t care if he has lots of sons. I don’t care if he’s manly or femme as fuck. I don’t care if he’s a ruthless businessman or a writer and academic. I don’t care if he makes me wet; I certainly don’t care if he matches some arbitrary, sexist idea of What Women Want that doesn’t match anything any woman I know has actually wanted. I care about his intelligence, his character, and his policies. If you want me to vote for Romney, make the case that he’s better at making decisions than Obama, that his values are more aligned with mine than Obama’s, that he’s more honest and more willing to make unpopular decisions and more willing to change his mind.
Don’t fucking say he’s manlier, because I don’t give a flying fuck.
I’d like to extend an apology to Republican feminists (and, yes, there are some– in fact, one of my best friends is). It must really fucking suck to be in the party of the “legitimate rape” dude, the War on Women, and the National Review, just because you happen to agree with Republican fiscal policy or what-the-fuck-ever. Sometimes progressive sexism gets me down, and then I look at the Republicans and I’m like “dear God I’m glad I don’t have to put up with that shit.”
I agree, but I’m not sure why you brought up seahorses and ducks. They’re not men!
“The conventional biological wisdom is what now? In a world that includes femdom hyenas, mpreg seahorses, octopus orgies, slutty bonobos, ducks with anti-rape vaginas, and a thousand other polymorphously perverse species, I think you’re going to need some serious evidence to claim that there’s a single thing that animals of one gender in all species select for.” This is the logical equivalent of saying “How can you claim that objects will fall to Earth due to gravity? What about birds? And dandelion seeds? And hot air balloons?” Biological systems are a complex web of interactions, with numerous general tendencies that… Read more »
It would be funny if there weren’t people who think this way. Somewhere along the way people started trying to use science to explain the things they already believed. Religion was passe and science replaced it, so the segment of the population that didn’t really understand either, but were thankful for modern conveniences used a bastardized, warped version of Darwinism to validate the various cultural beleifs they always had. Around Darwin’s time they called it “Social Evolution” and used it to justify colonialism and the ridiculous income gap. Now they call it “Evolutionary Psychology” and use it to justify sexism.… Read more »
Using “conventional biological wisdom” to back a candidate? If you think about it, this is kind of a dangerous approach for a politically conservative journal to take. This sounds awfully close to accepting natural selection (or at least a popularized version of it) as a good explanation for the way humans operate. Perhaps political conservatives are hedging their bets. Not only does God want Romney to win, but Darwin says he’s SUPPOSED to win. Both your Bible and your biology textbook say vote GOP. So, Darwinism is totally wrong because people are not animals, but hey, if it inspires you… Read more »
The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the rarity of the converse.
For fuck’s sake, this is not the conventional biological wisdom at all. It may be a common cultural belief, but it’s far from scientifically established.