Want some proof? All you have to do is examine how society treats the red pill gang on Reddit, the MGTOW folks on YouTube, or the Incels from 4 Chan. All you will find there are ad hominen attacks. Men's Rights activists are seen as nothing other than a bunch of neck bearded, unkempt, basement dwellers who oppose female equality and abuse women online or in person. There's rarely any effort expended at grappling with the ideas that these men produce. One simply takes a statement from one of the more extreme bombastic members as a fact of how all men really think. You don't need to engage their ideas, all you need to do is make fun of a bunch of virgins that can't get laid.*
I'm sure it's fun to take a whipping stick to these guys, but you might be surprised to learn that what a lot of these social misfits are discussing is backed by science. The science of Evolutionary Psychology to be exact.
I know what your immediate reaction is if you've heard of Evolutionary Psychology. Scientifically, it's just a bunch of just so stories. (3) Evolutionary Psychology is nothing more than a so-called science that uses broad stereotypes of human behavior to back up conventional and conservative thinking. Frankly, I've often accused EP of the same thing. I've discussed my distaste for evocative niche-picking with bored friends before. Now that I've had a change of heart, I guess I should apologize to Sandra Scarr for doubting her.
While listening to a recent podcast from Sam Harris where he interviewed the famous evolutionary psychologist David Buss I was struck by the similarities between much of the conversation in the Red Pill Community and the conversation that Buss was having with Harris.
Guys in the MRM [Men's Rights Movement] talk about how our monogamous society is returning to our slightly polgynous past. They warn society that the supply and demand of mates is out of wack and how this inbalance threatens society. They talk about hypergamy, mate selection theory, symmetry, the ugly guy syndrome, alpha males, orbiting back- ups and more.
Now that either says something interesting about the conversation in the red pill movement, or it makes your opinion of evolutionary psychology even lower than it already was.
The inspiration behind the interview in Harris' podcast was Buss' latest book titled: Men Behaving Badly: The hidden roots of sexual deception, harassment, and assault. Buss discusses his book along with evolutionary psychology with Sam.
Immediately the conversation begins with Harris asking Buss about the controversy surrounding evolutionary psychology. Why is evolutionary psychology so looked down upon? Buss defends EP by contending that much of the controversy around evolutionary psychology is a result of conceptual errors that people make about how evolutionary theory applies to humans. He even thinks that major text books make this same error. He points out how most psychology majors never take a course on EP. Remarkably he states that one can graduate with a PhD in psychology without ever taking even a single course on evolutionary psychology.
Buss goes on to make several points about why he thinks critics don't accept Evolutionary Psychology. I've identified 8 possible points of controversy in evolutionary psychology.
- Offends the religious right
- Offends leftists
- Critics object to even the possibility of sex differences between men and women
- EP covers controversial topics like rape and abuse
- Naturalistic fallacy
- Ignores the roll of culture
- Proximate vs. Ultimate causes
- Replication crisis & WEIRD crisis
Before I get into his defense of EP I should note that Buss is not at all a Men's Right's guy. In fact his book was heavily criticized by many red pill adherents as being anti-male, partly because of his emphasis that males are responsible for the majority of extreme violence, his concern of the dark triad personality in men, and his insistence on covering sexual coercion and possible solutions.
So let's talk about why Evolutionary Psychology might be controversial among people. The culture wars have not spared science. Many religious people object to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. They don't accept a naturalistic explanation for human origins; therefore, they unsurprisingly don't accept EP's findings or framing (even if they could agree with the potential stereotypes of sex roles that spring out of the science.)
On the left, we have concerns that finding a genetic basis for an attitude or behavior could keep us from adapting new behaviors or justify discrimination against (usually) women. Secondly, many people on the left absolutely refuse to accept that any differences exist between the sexes.
To illustrate I remember one conversation I was having with a bunch of my friends. You should know that most of my friends are highly educated liberals. Somehow the conversation came to upper body strength and I mentioned that on average men have greater upper body strength than women.
I was instantly poo-pooed for saying that. I further articulated my point by explaining that our species is dimorphic - that is that men are physically bigger than women (again) on average. This fact (and I kept repeating that 'hey it is a fact') men are bigger and they have greater upper body strength was denied. My friends would shake their heads at me. Now normally this group's opinions are fairly consistent with scentific findings and research. I was flummoxed by their denial of a concrete fact. I think at one point I asked the women to stand up so they could see they were smaller than their mates. Basically, I was told I was just wrong and everyone wanted to end that conversation.
#womenarestrong
So you can see that even well meaning, highly educated, liberal, scientifically minded folks can break down over an issue like this.
You can also see how some of these concerns melt into one another. Just mentioning sex differences was controversial. The discussion elicited strong emotional reactions from even the men that genetic differences could play a role here.
I think that's because many of my friends were operating under the presumption that I was making a naturalistic fallacy. I think they were concerned that I was arguing that because men and women have naturally different sizes and strength that those size differences could allow men to dominate women and that would a a good thing because nature has built us this way. Of course that was not my argument. I simply made a statement of fact that I assumed we all agreed upon.
Even if those problems didn't cause you to doubt the science in EP, science itself is having a bit of a replication crisis. A great deal of social science that has come during the past few decades has been potentially faulty. It turns out that generalizing from the so called WEIRD kids may not have been a good idea. WEIRD is an acronym that stands for white educated industrialized rich democracies which is where most researchers gathered their subjects, aka the rich white students in college from Western universities that they taught at.
A number of newer studies have been unable to repeat the findings of earlier landmark studies. This calls into question a great deal of social science and has been a particularly thorny problem in current research.
In the Sam Harris podcast David Buss responds to a number of the criticisms thrown his way about evolutionary psychology.
A REPLY TO THE REPLICATION CRISIS
Buss suggests that that the replication crisis in science is confined to Social Psychology.
While I'll agree with him that Social Psychology was particularly hit hard by this scandal, it's hardly alone in Social Science. Buss goes on to argue that EP is exempt from those concerns because it's more likely than other social sciences to use large cross cultural studies in its research, so he doesn't need to rely on just college students for his studies. He also bragged that the findings of EP - specifically sex differences in mating strategies and mate selection are much higher in magnitude than normal social science findings & are highly replicatible.(2)
While he defended the general strength of EP as a science he does mention how one particular favorite theory in EP that received a great deal of reporting, (a finding that women prefer men with more physical symmetry and masculinity when ovulating) was having some difficulty replicating.
I think Buss brings up this point because he has a different theory about mate selection. He calls his theory 'the mate switching hypothesis.' A bit later I'll talk about how I think his theory corresponds to the incel talk around male orbiters & the friend zone.
EVOLVED DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES: A PRIMER ON SOCIOBIOLOGY
Before we get to Buss' theory and it's connections with Red Pill activism we need to discuss a little bit about the basics behind Evolutionary Psychology.
I know. I'll try and keep this short to avoid sounding too much like a text book!
First, here's a list of differences between men and women that according to the book Human Diversity by Charles Murray who says he has discovered a number of non controversial ideas that relate to evolutionary psychology in neuroscience and genetics.
- Sex differences are consistent worldwide and tend to only widen in more gender egalitarian cultures
- On average females worldwide have advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visual spatial abilities and in the extremes of mathematical ability
- On average women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men to vocations centered on things
- Many sex differences in the brain are coordinated with sex differences in personality abilities and social behavior
Besides this list the evolved differences between the sexes also include a dramatic difference in physiology and a dramatic asymmetry in knowledge about parenthood.
To begin with physiological differences between the sexes include not just physical size, but the size of the sex cells. Males have small sex cells and females have large sex cells. These size differences foreshadow the drastic parental investment differences the sexes encounter. Women must physically allocate 9 months of parental investment while men may only donate a few seconds of a coughing out an orgasm.
The second big difference in the sexes is knowledge of paternity. Women know with certainty that they are the mother. A father on the other hand can only guess about paternity at least that was the case until the recent developments in DNA technology.
Evolutionary psychology predicts different psychology and behavioral strategies based on those different adaptive problems in the sexes. The most important differences will be in mating strategy. The men's rights gang seems preoccupied by the different mating strategies of women and you could say they take it personally.
Some basic facts on what men and women want from sex.
Men seek novelty of sex partners. And typically have a higher sex drive. Historically it is believed by EP that humans are a slightly polygynous species. That is one male with multiple female partners. One reason for this was our ancestors often faced brutal warfare over access to females which often left the tribe with fewer available males for mating. (4)
IF men are willing to go to war for women, you can see why women typically underestimate male sexual interest in females. Another finding in EP is that males typically overestimate female interest in them. In one experimental study 75 percent of all men said yes to a possible sex encounter with a female stranger. Not a single female agreed to a random stranger asking for casual sex to them.
Men and woman are built quite different. Men are typically attempting to spread their seed so to speak it makes sense then that successful men would presume female interest. Otherwise they'd never approach females. Likewise with so many male seekers it makes sense that woman are more discerning about the men who pursue them.
Males that overestimate female interest and who pursue short term dating strategies combined with the dark triad of personality are the most dangerous types of men for women. Though many females simply mistake those men's aggressive approach with confidence, because dangerous men have traits that females prefer like risk taking, leadership, and charm. Dark triad men are often quite charming because they are willing to lie to prospective mates for short term sex.
According to Buss MOST men aren't that dangerous, but when men with Short Term Dating Strategies come with the dark triad of personality type, that is (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopath) they can be especially dangerous to their partners. Dark Triad men typically have higher rates of stalking, harrasment, and violent mate guarding. When males and females seek long term partners their interests and likes are more aligned.
Another difference between the sexes: men have evolved to care more about a woman's looks because youth and looks are markers for health and offspring viability. Women typically care more about resources, social status, or the personality traits that signify those possibilities that would lead to a male accumulating resources or social status like industriousness, risk taking, and charm.
The differences in mating strategy can also explain how so called mating discrepancies appear in couples, like why young women date older men. It also explains most CBS sitcoms AKA the tendency for attractive women to date an uglier man. Those men may not be as mismatched as it would serve at first sight. Those men may have access to resources that the female wants that other men don't have.
Male infidelity strategies
Male infidelity makes evolutionary sense as parental investment by the male can be very small. Adding sex partners for males in a quick sex act only increases the chances of his offspring surviving. Adding partners for females in general; however, does not increase a woman's chance at having more offspring.
Men and women also care about different things in situations of a possible infidelity. In cases of infidelity women are more likely to want to know if the man has fallen in love with the other partner. They are worrying about the possibility of the male withdrawing resources or protection from her in favor of her rival. Men are more likely to worry about potential intercourse in female indefinitely because of the possibility of a confusing paternity.
In general women behave differently in the infidelity as well. Women fall in love with their partners when they commit infidelity, because women typically have an affair when they are unhappy in a relationship. The rates for women becoming romantically involved in their affairs are around 70%; whereas men typically do not focus on love and even take precautions to avoid the possibility. If men aren't unhappy in their extra marital affairs why are they having them? Some of the reasons include men having a higher sex drive than women and the males tendency to seek partner novelty. The higher sex drive and search for novelty are why men often have affairs even in perfectly happy unions.
FEMALE INFIDELITY
I spoke earlier of one explanation that tried to make sense of female infidelity. We will call that hypothesis the good gene theory. Traditionally, it was thought that women would only cheat on a partner who provided resources with a man that had a better genetic profile. Stay with the dad bod guy to raise the kids and cheat with the good looking bad boy. If you look at online forums you will see tons of incels who talk about how easy the symmetrical Chad's have it over the ugly guy incels like them. They berate themselves for not being good looking enough and criticize women for a double standard on lookism. They mention the 80/20 standard the idea that the majority of women try and get with the top 20 percent of men which leaves the majority of men without partners. This is part of the incel criticism of female mating strategies like hypergamy and polgyny.
Buss takes issue with that theory in favor of his mate switching hypothesis which he says makes more sense of the data.
Buss argues that female infidelity isn't powered by gene chasing, but by partner switching. "Females" he says "typically cheat when they are unhappy with the relationship whereas men will cheat even if they are happy in their relationship."
THE FRIEND ZONE
Mate switching also explains another problem red pill guys talk about the friend zone which involves beta males as "orbiters" around attractive women. Many red pill followers say women keep interested men around in the friend zone as back ups in case they decide to leave their current partner. Because men stuck in the friend zone typically infer {how to know if you are stuck in the friend zone} more sexual interest from their female counterparts than the females have for them the men often develop bitter feelings of resentment in the friend zone relationship.
Women are typically unconscious of these ideas and thus interpret the anger or bitterness from their male counterparts radically different from the males. One simply need look at social media for how women view their orbiters as needy, demanding, and entitled. But of course if what women are doing is keeping all these hanger on's for the possibility of mate switching when they tire of their current sex partners, or use their orbiters to get companionship and resources without having to commit then the bitterness of being in the friend zone is more understandable.
I see two theories that explain the friend zone. The first is what I'll call the deception theory. The deception theory is advocated by feminists who contend that men who've been Friend Zoned are hiding their true intentions. They aren't interested in being friends they want a romantic relationship and when they are called on it they become defensive and angry.
Of course the deception can run both ways. Incels suggest that it's the women who deceive by dangling partnership and a possible romantic relationship to a male by being inappropriately intimate with platonic friends in order to secure a beta male's time, commitment, protection, and resources without having to provide a romantic relationship with the male. The beta male 'orbits' or hangs around the female in the hopes that she will decide to select him all the while knowing she's really playing him for a simp. She's not really interested in the nice guy, she wants an Alpha.
NICE GUY SYNDROME
We need to question if the so called 'nice guy' in the friend zone is actually being deceptive in the first place. For years women have been telling men what they really want from men is what I call the Alan Alda Complex. The Alan Alda Complex is a set of ideas about how men should behave & treat women, that is a new moral code on how men should behave towards females.
- Men have been told to be nice.
- Don't be toxic or aggressive
- Stop cat calling
- Be sweet
I believe many men misinterpreted this demand by females to stop harassing women as a signal for a new strategy for males to gain female companions. In fact females do not want anything different from their mates. They still want alpha males. They still want to be led in relationships. What they really want is unwanted attention from inferior males to end and protection from overly aggressive, dangerous males.
The Alan Alda complex sweet guy is not a strategy for obtaining females, it's a demand for a new moral code on how to treat women. Males should understand that treating women in this manner will simply make them simps & won't make them be seen as viable mates. I'm not suggesting males become dangerously aggressive towards women or continue unwanted behavior towards women. But men need to know that if you are going to simp at be aware of what you will get from it. You will be friend zoned and taken advantage of. If you don't want to be Friend Zoned look towards the Men Going Their Own Way as your new moral code. Men shouldn't abuse women or give them unwanted attention, but don't need to provide unrequited love and resources either.
DIVORCE
When things do go wrong in a relationship it will usually be the woman that files for divorce. 80 percent of all divorce filings are by the female.
Unsurprisingly again we find differences about why the sexes file for separation. Women file for divorce most often because of an economic indicator, for instance a job loss of their spouse. If a man loses his job he is basically asking for a divorce. Men's rights groups usually promulgate these stats with frequent warnings to men that "as soon as you lose your job your wife will leave you." You could say they are right. Job loss is the number one factor for why women file for divorce from men. The second is male infidelity.
Women get divorced too and the main reason men file for divorce is infidelity. A woman's age increase is also correlated with divorce. The older the woman the more likely she becomes victim to a filing. Not unrelated when men remarry they tend to marry younger. The more marriages the younger the wife. By the third marriage men marry women 8 years younger than themselves.
Step children & the abusive male
The number one source of conflict in mixed (aka divorced and then newly wed families) is the presence of a step child in the home. The number 1 cause of death for step children under the age of 6 is being a step child. Women are 5x more likely to beaten when they bring children into another marriage. That's not to say it should be forgiven, but Sociobiology has a prediction and explanation for that. Some males simply don't want to invest resources into another father's children. One sees this in the animal kingdom all the time.
Buss again makes a pain to point out that NOT ALL MALES are abusive towards step kids. Buss argues that his dark triad personality types who pursue STDS (cheaters in this context) make up the vast majority of abusers. They are serial abusers who harass, mate guard, stalk, and use violence against step children.
THE DARK TRIAD MALE PERSONALITY TYPE EXPLAINED
Dangerous MALES are those that posses the three major characteristics of the dark triad which are:
- Narcissism: people with high egos and a sense of entitlement
- Machiavellianism: People who use others; they are liars, cheaters, and people who treat others as a means to an end.
- Psychopathy: lack of empathy. Men typically score higher on the index here than women.
Modern environments may actually select for increased psychopathy, because many of the negative costs associated with these traits are no longer incurred like in traditional settings.
For instance lack of empathy and using people would come at a high cost in traditional societies where most people knew each other. But modern environments allow greater anonymity moving from one big city to another big city.
Internet dating
Men can use dating sites that offer opportunity to exploit females who are looking for long term partners because dating apps facilitate short term hook ups. Men who use dating sites are typically looking for casual hook ups much more often than women with around 30 percent of all men on Tinder being in a relationships or married.
Dating apps introduce a number of other mate selection activation problems between males and females. Dating apps make the selection bias explicit because both women and men now have access to access thousands of mate possibilities instead of a few dozen in more traditional societies.
Men with higher status and height (women have been surveyed to find men who are six feet more attractive -while men are known to fudge this) receive the highest response rates along with women who rate high on the attractiveness scale. According to EP most people shoot for mates that are 20 percent higher than themselves we find dating apps inadvertently reinforcing hypergamy (dating up) & lookism while inadvertently promoting a polygynous future.
A return to polygyny
Incels have been decrying the modern hypergamic trend for a while now. Incels tend to stress genetics and lookism along with superficial female behavior over other causes.
I have suggested a different set of causes of hypergamy that include the break down of the middle class, loss of blue collar middle class jobs, the collapse of the industrial base which prevents large swaths of men from obtaining high paying jobs that could support a spouse and family.
I won't bore you with statistics about the colapse of male headed households, or how young people are having less sex, especially men. Young people lose their virginity later, have fewer relationships if any, and delay marriage and children (in fact without the addition of immigration the USA would not be at replacement rate for its population.) In addition to economic factors the break down of traditional values has freed women to start their own careers, seek out new family styles, and explore their sexual orientations all without necessity of finding a male. With these factors a return to polygyny and hypergamy seems highly likely especially given the easy facilitation of dating apps and the internet. A woman no longer has to find a male and settle down. She can have a child out of wedlock and depend on the government or her new same sex partner to provide for her.
But there are long term problems for hypergamy and polygynous dating strategies. They are an absolutely destabilizing force in society. The few studies about polygyny show break up rates near 90%. Polygyny also leaves a lot of young men without mates. Men left alone at their height of their testosterone levels and given no purpose or promise to mate get bitter, violent, and throw away their lives to crime or wasteful activities like all day video gaming and extreme porn watching.
What are some solutions?
First we need to understand that sex difference denialism is unscientific and it actually harms women. EP provides predictions and explanations for problems we find in society between the sexes. It even offers up solutions in some cases.
For instance: Sociobilogical findings suggest that men and women perceive bad male behavior differently. This has led many in EP to suggest solutions like repealing the "reasonable person standard" in the judicial system. Adding a more female centered regulation.
EP also offers ways to protect women against sexual coercion. We shouldn't simply dismiss these recommendations as being anti-female. Some of the techniques of EP are known to protect women:
- Fear- women should be taught to listen to their natural fear of strange men. Listen to your gut ladies.
- Body Guards- One of the best techniques is for women to use trusted men and female companions to keep bad men away.
- Tonic Mobility- We should all learn about tonic mobility as a pain prevention device and as an involuntary physical response to physical entrapment and not use it as an opportunity to blame the victim for inaction
When asked about the question of polygyny directly, Dr. Buss hedged. He said it was impossible to predict the future. Basically he admitted that he didn't have a solution for the crisis. Someone in the talk offered up pornography as a possible solution for matelessness. And one MRM creator the Better Bachelor suggests pornography as a replacement for genuine relationships. I don't think pornography is a solution. It doesn't solve the problem of human companionship. It's potentially addictive, I have talked elsewhere about the addictive and nightmare potential of extreme pornography. Furthermore; I don't see how pornography addresses the coming under-population problem.
Real solutions aren't simple. They would require a reorganization of society. A universal basic income for starters that would allow the underclass some dignity. Subsidies for child care and child rearing. And somewhat controversially I have suggested that we may need to keep some ideas from traditional patriarchal society.
Evolutionary Psychology may not have all the answers, but it can be an important tool for understanding solutions to the ultimate causes for our adapted biological problems. We can no longer ignore it's research or it's advice.
*(For a more sympathetic view of the Men's Rights Movement by a feminist see this documentary.)
(2) It should be noted that correlations in the social sciences are notorious for their weakness. See Charles Murray in the Bell Curve.
(3) A derogatory term for a hypothesis as it relates to EP and Sociobiology.
(4) Buss interviewed a group of tribesmen who suggested the only reason to go to war was access to women. They were astonished someone might go to war for democracy.
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