Thomas at the Yes Means Yes blog has the tidiest take-down I’ve ever seen of human sexual selection psudoscientific fairytales, and mainstream media reposting thereon:
I give you this. Apparently, men are “hardwired” to spend to attract mates because, somehow, some pre-consumer society behavior that developed before agriculture magically transmogrified directly to behavior at the mall. And the scientists are in no way simply imposing a “just-so story” on their observations. At least not any more so than is standard in their field.
This is worthless in and of itself. People who don’t understand science tell us something about the findings of a discipline that is pseudoscience.
The intro, though, is what cracked me up:
We all know the stereotype: the “goldthrower.” The guy who spends profligately looking to attract female partners, whether he can afford it or not.
Wait … did you miss that one? Me too.
But we all know what a “golddigger” is.
But, while we’re neologizing, (look! I verbed!), I’d like to cast my vote for ‘goldflinger’ instead. I think it comes closer to matching the indignity implied by ‘golddigger.’
It’s not like there’s no value in trying to suss out how humans pick who we make babies with, or how that’s shaped human evolution. But there seem to be a couple big flaws in the reasoning the researchers (or the journalists reporting, to be fair, I can’t seem to find the original journal article anywhere handy) apply to modern dating, let alone the way they assume that human mating strategies have remained fixed, with only the tactics shifting to match current culture.
I mean, really, who believes that sleeping with more people equals having more babies these days? Shit, the more people I sleep with, the more careful I am to avoid makin’ the babies. And I’m sure lots of women and men are out there doing the same–using condoms like flac jackets when we’re single, letting the BC slip when having a kid would be more of a surprise than an accident. Second, assuming that today’s conspicuous consumerism is directly decended from cave men giving cave women cave jewlery to get in their cave pants is, well, fucking stupid. In a society where women gather the large bulk of everyone’s calories, gifts of food would be more of a gesture than a survival aid. Money didn’t exist for the bulk of human history. And today, men who get laid more buy what, supposedly? Doesn’t say. Gifts for women? Fancy status-symbol possessions for themselves? Paying off medical bills? Supporting their aging parents? Student loans? Supporting their meth habit? Don’t those things sound kinda…different to you, in terms of whether or not someone’s spending to get laid?
