Female choice
The similarity between Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, and the criminals (in fact, all men in evolutionary history) points to a very important concept in evolutionary biology: female choice. In all species in which the female makes greater parental investment than the male (such as humans and all other mammals), mating is a female choice; it happens when the female wants it to happen, and with whom she wants it to happen, not when and with whom the male wants it to happen.
The power of female choice becomes quite apparent in a simple thought experiment. Imagine for a moment a society where sex and mating were entirely a male choice; individuals have sex whenever and with whomever men want, not whenever and with whomever women want. What would happen in such a society? Absolutely nothing, because people would never stop having sex! There would be no civilization in such a society, because people would not do anything besides have sex. This, incidentally, is the reason why gay men never stop having sex: there are no women in their relationships to say no. Sexually active straight men on average have had 16.5 sex partners since age 18; gay men have had 42.8.
In reality, however, women do often say no to men. (In my experience, they always do.) This is why men throughout history have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint portraits and cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software, in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. There would be no civilization, no art, no literature, no music, no Beatles, no Microsoft, if sex and mating were a male choice. Men have built (and destroyed) civilizations in order to impress women so that they might say yes. Women are the reason men do everything.
Once again, my personal hero Bill Maher captures the essence of female choice perfectly, when he quips: “For a man to walk into a bar and have his choice of any woman he wants, he would have to be the ruler of the world. For a woman to have the same power over men, she’d have to do her hair.” In other words, any reasonably attractive young woman exercises as much power as does the (male) ruler of the world.
Put differently, every woman has the power to predict the future, while very few men do. If a man wakes up in the morning and says to himself, “Tonight I will get laid,” the prediction will fail a vast majority of the times, unless he’s incredibly handsome. (Most young men in fact do make this prediction every morning and go to bed alone and disappointed every night.) If a woman -- any woman -- wakes up in the morning and says to herself, “Tonight I will get laid,” the prediction will always come true every time. Such is the power of female choice.
Hi, Mr. Kanazawa, I want to
Hi, Mr. Kanazawa,
I want to reply to your statement that sexual activity always occurs when and with whom the female wants it to occur. Even notwithstanding rape, this is not a true statement. For example, under most circumstances, I will not sleep with a woman simply because she solicits it - or, for that matter, because she works hard to seduce me. I'm not interested in shagging with a woman simply because she makes herself available to me; I want better for myself than that. (I can imagine exceptions to this rule: perhaps, if I am drunk, despairing, and convinced that I am worthless, I will be willing to engage in casual sex with the first woman who consents.) The fact that I will not engage in sex with just any woman means that I am selective; hence, with regard to me, at least, mating is not merely the choice of my desired partner, but it is also my choice. Additionally, I personally know other men who have greater respect for themselves as well as women and who better avail themselves of their capacity for self-control than to submit to the sort of prurient and irresponsible behavior you describe. We cannot be the only men in the whole world who operate this way. Your article paints men and women in strokes that are too broad to represent them accurately.
I would also suggest, Mr. Kanazawa, that your article does our society a disservice by encouraging us to believe that men are really no more than helpless animals - that is, you omit from your analysis any consideration of the capacities for reason, responsibility, and self-control that men do, in fact, possess, and which enable them to decide not to have sex even when willing women are available. We men can be and are motivated by greater things than the selfish and base pursuit of sex. Mr. Kanazawa, we men do not need to hear any more groundless reasons to believe we are worthless, despicable, useless, hopeless, or disgusting. I would instead like to hear what science has to tell us about what we men do have to offer humanity when we are good fathers, good husbands, and good men generally.
David