Posted: Mar 20, 2011 2:36 pm
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:The specific exemplars are irrelevant, as the effect will be a result of generalisation and not a concretely learnt concept. In other words, if I'm driving along and I see a slightly orange truck with flashing lights and the word "FIRE" on the side, I'm going to treat it like a fire truck even if it's not red. The beauty of learning is that we don't need to be reinforced for specific behaviors in order for us to display them.
You've lost me here.
If it was about male habituation to porn etc why did the males respond so easily to the sex they did say they preferred? That would be what they had most viewed etc and should be most habituated to.
Because not all habituation is equal. You get the behavioral equivalent of 'momentum', where the most reinforcing things are more resistant to extinction. So if sexual responses were habituated in a person who was exposed to a lot of porn, then we would expect that there would be minimal-to-zero responses to images that they don't find appealing, and the most response to the images they find appealing.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:I agree that there might be a patriarchal bias in the interpretation of this fact - that is, just because women "want it" just as much as men doesn't mean that rape doesn't occur, because rape occurs in men too. It doesn't, or shouldn't, justify any excuse that "secretly" she wanted it, and legally such an excuse would get thrown out of court when there is evidence of requests for the man to stop. Most of the claims you've brought up appear to be pretty broad and ones that are partially true but clearly inapplicable to large groups of people - for example, "women love to be in sex work" is essentially a meaningless statement. Some will enjoy it, some will hate it, and most will just see it as another job. As long as these women aren't forced into it by other people though, and they are consenting adults,
What if they are forced into it by environmental conditions? Or by survival needs? Or that they have been educated by a particular environment to ignore the negatives?
Then it's the same as any other job. I'd say 99% of all employed people in the world got into their line of work as a result of environmental pressures, survival needs and because they weren't fully aware of what the job entailed.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:then whether they love it or not isn't too important and the evolutionary nature of female sexuality shouldn't even come into it.
So that other females in other species exchange sex for resources is irrelevant?
Or that they exchange sex for protection by males?
Or they exchange sex to avoid being harmed or their children being harmed as in other species?
Yes, it's irrelevant.
sprite wrote:Males in other species do not do the reverse nor in humans.
Is that irrelevant too?
I'm not sure what you mean? Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as male prostitutes? Or men who become boy toys to rich older women? Or stay in unsatisfying relationships for their kids?
sprite wrote:To pretend that sex is the same for the two sexes in any species, including humans, is ridiculous.
What happened is that the view that women either don't want sex or want it much less than males, etc etc was wrong.
All that has happened is that the falsehood of this belief has sent us to the opposite view that women are the same as men.
That is equally wrong.
Out of interest, describe to me what the male position on sex is.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:If sexuality is the same for both sexes then how could sexual dimorphism evolve?
This is a misleading question. The issue is not whether sexuality has been the same for both sexes in our evolutionary history, the question is what aspects of our current behavior can be explained by evolutionary processes and what aspects can be explained by learning processes.
And for that we have to look at our evolutionary history.
What evolutionary processes do you look at without looking at them in other species?
Looking at other species is the last part of the research. First we need to establish that a difference exists, then we need to rule out learning factors, then we need to verify that it is consistent with what we know about evolved behaviors, and then finally we need to establish that it has an evolutionary precursor (by looking at other, related, species).
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:So your question 'What difference between male and female sexuality?' if you just mean humans implies that you think that humans are either monogamous and so have little difference like gibbons, which evidence very much goes against, or you think that humans have evolved something unique which means they can have different selection pressures on males and females but these do not affect their bodies and behaviours - any difference is about something else.
So you are suggesting that while in other species differential reproductive success within each sex is different and results from differences in bodies and behaviours and leads to the spreading of certain different traits in each of the sexes, in humans differential reproductive success has done nothing.
Or do you think differential reproductive success in other species also does nothing which is inherited?
No, what I was asking for was simply evidence based examples of differences in gender based sexuality (in humans). And, specifically, evidence which helps us differentiate between aspects that are learnt, and those that have evolved.
Well, female sexual interest varies due to the menstrual cycle with a peak around ovulation and probably pre-menstrually. I think anyone who has ever been in a heterosexual relationship knows how the relationship varies across the cycle.
See The Evolutionary Biology of Human Female Sexuality which puts in in terms of womens having more than one sexuality but basicaly is about how women think and feel about sex changes across the menstrual cycle.
Interesting. And how do the authors separate out the effects that the menstrual cycle has on behavior, and the evolutionary effects associated with the menstrual cycle?
sprite wrote:Males don't have menstrual cycles and produce hundreds of millions of sex cells everyday. That is a massive difference to start with and one that has evolved.
Sure, but we're talking about behavior, not physical differences.
sprite wrote:Human females have evolved to be receptive to sex outside of oestrus, and lesser versions of this are seen in other apes and monkeys and we understand the adaptiveness in other species.
Do you think human females have evolved or learn to have sex when there is no chance of conception? And if this has evolved in other species? Or do you think this behaviour is learned in other species too?
Hard to tell, I don't know if it'd be possible to create a study to separate out the effects as the process of menstruation is presumably somewhat painful for the woman and comes along with a number of unpleasant side effects, so naturally we'd expect them to have different responses to sexual advances over the course of their cycle.
sprite wrote:Do you think females have evolved to be more or less constantly sexually attractive to males throughout the menstrual cycle or have learned to be so?
"Consistently" is speaking beyond the evidence, but the fact that hormonal changes could produce changes that make it more probable that a male would find them attractive seems pretty uncontroversial.
sprite wrote:Can you think (and here I'm noting that when you use the word 'evolved' you are really talking about adaptations?) of how this can be adaptive behaviour in the females of some species, including our own? How it is an evolved trait?
The better question would be: why are you lumping in hormonal changes with a discussion on behavior?
sprite wrote:(I could even start a massive debate about the female orgasm but I'd be surprised if anyone would say that it is the same in the two sexes - not the actual experience but all that goes with it from ease of achievement to multiple orgasms to whether it is an adaptation in females or a by-product of an adaptation in males)
Perhaps an interesting discussion, but not entirely relevant to a discussion on behavior..
sprite wrote:I think the basic issue here boils down to what I think is different in humans. Our mating system has been one where more successful reproduction ie more survival of offspring, has come about by both sexes having to largely go against their 'nature' (through a mixture of evolved mate-guarding and evolved cooperation between philopatric males). Whatever genetic changes there have been, and there surely have been some, we are not 'naturally' monogamous but pair-bonding is what produced the best outcome for offspring.
See for example Primeval kinship: how pair-bonding gave birth to human society
Where monogamy exists in other species it is mostly in isolated family groups where it occurs because females stop the male mating with other females and males stop the female mating with other males.
We had to manage our pair-bonding+male parental investment within large multimale-mutifemale groups.
Due to a number of things we inherited from our immediate ancestors (eg male philopatry, sexual dimorphism)females could be mate-guarded more easily than males.
So we have this mis-match in both sexes between the more promiscuous (though still very different between the sexes) nature and the needs of offspring. Both sexes had to compromise between their own inherited attraction to novel members of the other sex and the survival of offspring.
Then we get the greater dominance of some males and so on.
So that is why we struggle so much with our 'wants' and with the demands of offspring and problems in reproductive relationships and control of females etc etc.
Currently females can have direct access to resources or the state can take over paternal investment in offspring or people can even give up the costs of offspring etc etc so both sexes can revert to a more promiscuous sex life.
But even that earlier nature, which will have also been altered for some (as selection has likely selected more pair-bonding propensities in some or in parts of the life-cycle), will be one of differences between the sexes. These differences will be the basic ones connected to the effects of the different gametes on the bodies that produce them plus probably other differences that have evolved during our own evolution since the pan/homo split.
I'm a little confused - if you're saying that our sexual behaviors (in the form of monogamy and so on) are going against our "nature", then you're saying that the behaviors are learnt. If they aren't learnt, then they are part of our nature.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:Two quite different examples.
Firstly back to hermaphrodites. In most, though not all, simultaneous hermaphrodites each one tries to avoid being inseminated while trying to inseminate the other. Is there some pleasure connected to insemination and pain connected to being inseminated? Why would that be? In some cases there is in fact genuine pain - being stabbed and the seminal fluid burning through the skin, for example. But even in the case of fish where the gametes are simply being released there is still this difference. It would appear to be painful to release eggs but not sperm? So we get 'sperm' trading where the most keen to mate releases eggs first - does the more painful thing? - and then the exchange commences.
Why have they evolved to experience different pleasure or pain in relation to eggs and sperm do you think?
In the few hermaphrodites where it seems to be preferable to receive the sperm it appears to be because the sperm is digested ie used as food rather than to fertilize eggs. Far less painful when sperm is a useful food source. (Then we get males evolving chemicals in the ejaculate or the 'love darts' of snails which stop their sperm being digested by the mate).
I'm not sure what this example is trying to suggest?
Exactly what it says.
The production of eggs leads to something different re. the experience of peasure/pain than does the production of sperm.
As the meeting of eggs and sperm is reproduction, why there are two sexes, why the two sexes interact etc etc, this interaction means that what is good/pleasurable for the goose is not necessarily good/pleasurable for the gander. Conflict.
But learning doesn't operate over groups, so only the pleasure and pain of the individual will affect its learning.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:Secondly a quite different example, chimpanzee (and bonobo) female dispersal.
Males always stay in their birth group, females mostly disperse.
There was a fascinating tv documentary recently about a community of chimpanzees that has become isolated in a steep narrow valley. The land around them was bare and dangerous to venture in to. One female had reached puberty and kept going to the edge and looking across the bare land. She actually did set off to find a new community but returned a few days later having obviously failed to cross the bare land even though it was only a few miles to forest and other chimpanzees.
So the males, presumably, feel pleasure in remaining in their birth group but the females when they reach puberty feel pain and seek pleasure elsewhere? The sexes experience differences in pleasure and pain? Why? Does this not mean that they have some innate difference which means they experience these pleasure/pain differences?
It's impossible to tell from such an example, as the females would have vastly different learning experiences from the males..
Such as?
What different learning experiences do female chimps have from males? Essentially everything. For starters they are smaller in size, so they have to learn new ways to get access to food and other resources besides aggression. Presumably after giving birth, they will spend most of the time with the baby whilst the males do other things (e.g. aggressive attacks on other groups of chimps) and so they'll not only improve their methods of communication, but through teaching their children skills like tool use they will practice and improve on their own skills.
There are a number of different things, but undeniably males and females across species have different learning experiences.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:This doesn't seem relevant to my original point though, which was that even fundamental biological needs are not simply a function of evolution. As a very simple example, even though eating and hunger is most likely an evolved trait, we still eat even when we aren't hungry - like when we go out on dates, or to cheer ourselves up, or at birthday parties, etc. The point is that sometimes we do topographically identical behaviors for vastly different reasons, and if we tried to attribute the "cheering up eating" to an evolutionary process, then we'd be flat out wrong. The same applies to thing like sex - given the correct learning environment, a person with a "low sex drive gene" (for simplicity's sake) could become the most lascivious horn dog, and equally someone with the "aggressive sex gene" could become someone who isn't turned on by anything but very gentle, sweet lovemaking.
In other words, we do these behaviors for a number of vastly different reasons, and to treat them all as a singular group is a mistake.
So why do we not have cultures where men exchange sex for resources from women?
Or exchange sex for protection from women?
Or exchange sex for protection of their children?
But men do do this. And especially more so as the "man culture" (where men had to be the provider, had to be strong, and independent, etc) is decreasing in popularity, and it's becoming more acceptable for men to be house husbands.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:
You haven't demonstrated that though. You've just pointed out that sexual selection is a real evolutionary process, that reproduction cycles can form part of sexual selection, and then asserted that human behavior can be explained by this process.
No, not that all human behaviour is thus explained.
I'm only saying that men and women are not the same.
Undeniably so. But not all differences are a result of sexual selection, obviously.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:It is not about conscious decision making necessarily but as you might argue it is perhaps about pleasure and pain. Hence the extreme pain women feel regarding true rape.
Or that girls feel in societies where they are married off to men twice their age or older though no doubt a pleasure for the men.
Are you really suggesting that our aversion to rape is because it means that we have no control over our evolutionary futures?
No. A female's aversion to rape is because she evolved from successfully reproducing females who were successful because they could prevent rape.
Behaviours evolve because they lead to more offspring that have those behaviours.
If females that allow males they find unattractive to fertilize their eggs have fewer numbers of offspring than females who have mechanisms that discriminate between males or between sperm then 'female choice' evolves.
Are you saying 'female choice' is not an evolved mechanism?
Geez, one hundred years it took to get past the male bias against female choice and forty years later we are back there again.
This is so wrong. You don't think that the horrible experience of someone violating you against your will would affect how people view rape? Are you suggesting that humans have a natural aversion to rape?
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:It would be a very unfortunate state if we had a situation where men and women were assumed to have the same pleasure/pain experience rather than different ones. I'm sure this is part of the problem regarding sexual rejection for men. Even some have asked this question on these forums, and a gay friend once asked me the same ie why not just enjoy the sex? So we get all kinds of theories from men about how women are teasing them, leading them on, manipulating them, being vengeful etc etc. If men think women really feel the same as they do about sex ie any sex is better than none, then we have a serious problem.
Some women do, some women don't. But that's not really the question, because even if we could demonstrate that biologically men and women have the same default setting for sex, we would still expect men to find it more pleasurable than women in our current society. So the fact that we find this doesn't tell us anything about our evolutionary past as it is predicted by two separate theories.
How could the sexes have evolved the same default setting for sex?
Give examples where this has happened in other species.
Under what envrionmental conditions would such a thing evolve?
Where is this environment in our past?
It was a hypothetical to point out the importance of not ignoring environmental effects. The point wasn't that the sexes have evolved the same setting for sex, but rather that even in that highly hypothetical situation, learning processes could still produce the same observations we see today. So if we accepted that the setting was not the same for each sex, then we're faced with the serious problem of separating out learnt from evolutionary effects.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm confused by your last line: do you really think men believe that "any sex is better than none"? Part of the reason I wanted to differentiate "male bias" from "patriarchal bias" above is precisely this reason - stereotypes exist for both sexes and the patriarchy can be damaging to both. So, this bias might lead to a belief that women should be pure virgins and any girl that ever has sex is a "whore", but it also leads to the hilariously mistaken view that men love sex, that it takes up a lot of their life, and that they'd do almost anything to get it.
I think we do have a problem, but it's probably more to do with the cartoon characters of each sex that our society has created.
I agree that stereotypes are a problem and variation is not given enough attention.
But when I can look at other species and see both these stereotypical behaviours in the males and females, and differences that can be explained by the very same reasoning that explains the stereotypes then I don't see why all this is suddenly irrelevant for humans.
So you are suggesting that men are basically horn dogs that would have sex with almost anything?..
sprite wrote:In the 70s it was perfectly normal to believe in humans as being 'blank slate'. We all thought that. I learned () how wrong that was.
That is ridiculous.. What course were you doing? How did they even find a blank slate position in science? I can't think of a single blank slate philosophy that has been suggested in the last few hundred years.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:This is not like hunger or thirst which is the survival part of natural selection, it is about sex/reproduction which is about two different sexes where selection acts differently (except in true genetic monogamy).
It's still the same principle - biological processes are appropriated by learning mechanisms.
So you think that you could be trained to be absolutely anything?
As a parent and grandparent I only wish training was that easy.
The thing about humans is why we do things in spite of being trained otherwise and even when on the surface it brings us pain.
No of course not, as John B Watson explained, we can only raise people within their natural constraints. But these constraints have a fair bit of leeway and learning can account for a vast amount of our behaviors, even when they look biological in form.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:If you then argue that the differences men and women feel about pleasure in connection to sex is learned then if women say that 'actually that experience was painful' the response from him is that it is only because she has learned incorrectly? Could she not argue that, no, his pleasure in that experience is because he has learned incorrectly? Who decides?
This is an odd response. Are you suggesting that if your evolutionary explanation is correct, then it's perfectly reasonable for the man to respond to the women by suggesting she has evolved incorrectly? It's nonsensical.
No, I'm saying this is your reasoning.
Ok, jump to the political.
Soviet Russia. Educate people for a particular social/political/economic system. The education is not completely acceptable to everyone and some people say it causes them pain.
So have they been educated incorrectly?
Do they need to be re-educated?
I don't see what relevance this has?
sprite wrote:When there is a conflict of interests as there is in sexual/reproductive relations then if, say, women say they feel pain that they are constrained to be monogamous while their mate mates with other women is it because they have been educated incorrectly? Do they need re-education?
If women express their pain about their husband's addiction to internet porn is it becuase one or the other has been educated incorrectly?
Do we educate them both to enjoy the porn or both not to enjoy the porn?
If the pleasure or pain each feels about this is just because they have learned to view porn differently what should we start teaching our sons and daughters? That they both should enjoy it or neither should.
Women taught to enjoy DP and 'facials' etc etc
There was some psychology I seem to remember (Freud?) that concluded that women are naturally masochists.
I can't wait for the new world where women ask each other 'does he swallow menstrual blood?'
These are all political questions and irrelevant to science.
sprite wrote:And the book I mentioned way back by the psychologist Bader apparently (I haven't read it yet) says that though the humiliation of women in porn and male fantasy is real the men don't actually want the women to not be enjoying the experience but to be enjoying it ie enjoy being humiliated. Guess there's a lot of successful education and re-education going on of more and more women in this respect too.(Why have we not educated men away from porn and into romantic fiction? Can't any variation on this be achieved if we want in your view?)
No problem? You think?
I don't get what any of this has to do with the topic.
sprite wrote:Apparently so without any objective framework involved. I think evolution at least provides an objective framework.
Is there anything you think would be difficult to educate people to do and enjoy?
Do you think everything is equally easy or difficult to instil in people?
Might there at least be some things that are easier than others?
Why would that be?
No of course some things are easier to learn than others because some things are the product of evolutionary "preparedness" (and even "counterpreparedness"). And some concrete innate behaviors like fixed-action patterns can be incredibly difficult to alter.
I don't understand the relevance though.
sprite wrote:What I am saying is that pretending men and women are the same, or all people are born the same, and anyone can be anyhting just isn't on.
More than that, it is quite a horrific belief.
Fortunately, nobody has suggested that. With regards to sex specifically though, I'm yet to see any evidence that men are biologically more promiscuous than women.
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:We're talking about science, the results are descriptive not prescriptive. If men and women have evolved to enjoy sex to different levels, then that's just a fact, neither one is "right" or "wrong". Our legal system covers the rest - if a man wants to argue that he didn't rape a woman because she's evolved/learnt to secretly like sex as much as him, he'll still get thrown in jail if she didn't consent to it.
Yet only 6% of rape cases get a conviction in court and vast numbers more don't even go to court and women don't even report rape because as their rapist enjoys telling them - no one will believe them.
That's a problem with the legal system and irrelevant to our discussion.
sprite wrote:Men and women are the same when it comes to sex, you say, so why not just enjoy the sex? How on earth can a woman kiss and canoodle and pet with a man and not want sex? He does and she, you say, is the same as him after all. You think she has some 'natural' sexuality same as his that has just been stopped from being freely expressed due to learning. You wish
What? That isn't anything like what I've suggested.
Some men and some women just like to mess around - kissing and heavy petting isn't consent to have sex, and it doesn't imply that someone "subconsciously" wants to have sex. And I'm also appalled at the "you wish" comment as the implications seem to be pretty distasteful.
Regardless, the point is that there are differences in how men and women view sex as a result of learning. Surely this isn't a controversial position? The fact that for centuries (or longer), society has dictated that women should be "proper ladies" and induced guilt-trips on any woman that dared have sex, accusing them of being "whores", "sluts" and "slappers", and you're thinking that this wouldn't affect how they view sex?
sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:Sex is not about sharing fluids but about a one way journey of sex cells from him to her. Not a minor difference.
Arguably true, but discussing the evidence surrounding how this affects behavior is the problematic part. This is the key part of the disagreement. I accept sexual selection occurs, and I accept that it's probably occurred in humans (I see no reason to doubt it). However, this doesn't not mean that we can automatically attribute any differences between men and women to sexual selection, and just because a behavior is sexual does not validate that leap in logic at all.
'Arguably true'??!!! It is true.
"Arguably" because it was a soundbite that was meaningless without context, and I was accepting it based on my interpretation of what I thought you meant. In other words, on the face of it, the statement is false. Sex can include a number of things that don't involve transferring sex cells, and sometimes it doesn't even involve sharing fluids - even if we exclude various sexual activities outside of intercourse, there's still the fact that sex with a condom rules out this possibly. So it is "arguably true" in that as long as you're talking about sex with the intention of reproduction, then yes it's about the transference of sex cells.
sprite wrote:I do a lot of arguing against the EPers that state 'facts' about the differences between the sexes when they are wrong too.
What is a disaster looming, though, is to react by going too much in the opposite direction.
I haven't gone in any direction, I'm simply skeptical of claims.