Motivation

This week’s readings on evolutionary psychology put me very much in mind of the MacKinnon reading from two weeks ago. Whether or not you believe that human instincts are many or few, whether all of our thoughts and behaviors can be categorized by a few basic heuristics or are highly situationally dependent, the common thread through Buss’ work was that sex is a/the primary motivator. Maybe this was understood last week as part of the discussion of individual versus group fitness, but it felt much more salient this week. I use sex here as the drive to reproduce (the seeming lack of which leaves Buss stumped as to both the motivations of gays – since “Any orientation that lowered the likelihood of successful reproduction would be ruthlessly selected against.” – and lesbians – for which he at least can try to assert the traditional masculine feminine paradigms by pointing out that “Butch lesbians tend to be more masculine, dominant, and assertive, whereas femme lesbians tend to be more sensitive, cheerful, and feminine.”).

At the risk of being too touchy-feely for the class, I am truly curious as to how other members of the class react to the portrayal of gender roles in Buss. They make me feel very boxed in, while at the same time feeling mischaracterized. I may consider myself “femme” and yet also consider myself much more “masculine, dominant, and assertive” than the average woman. However, I don’t have the original study data and thus do not know the design and who was being compared (i.e. maybe lesbians/bisexual women are generally more “masculine” than straight women according to whatever factor measures masculinity).

To return to the original point, the reading does culminate in what could be considered the empirical evidence David felt was lacking for MacKinnon’s philosophical observations about sexual violence against women. Why do men attack other men? Sexual competition. Why do men attack women? Because they feel like the women might have other/better options and they want to keep their women. Why do women (verbally) attack other women? To make those women appear less sexually attractive to men.

Is this story better or truer because it’s based on an evolutionary rather than a philosophical analysis of society? It certainly has a greater air of inevitability about it. My concern is that the evolutionary perspective might lead people to feel like violence is somehow “natural” and evolutionarily justified, particularly violence against women. After all, in cross-cultural studies, “Male sexual jealousy…turned out to be a human universal and the leading cause of spousal homicide in the many cultures that have been surveyed so far.”

Can and should these evolutionary stories be broken down or given precedence? Our society places a great deal of weight on science, or at least the portion of society that believes in things like evolution. It might strike some as wrong to work against human nature in dealing with issues like domestic violence, or other types of interpersonal violence. In a way, the social acceptance of violence can be seen in our sentencing for non-violent drug crimes as compared to crimes like assault. For example, under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, merely possessing heroin or cocaine has a base level of 8; while an assault with physical contact, or the threatened use and possession of a dangerous weapon, has a base level of 7 (2007 Federal Sentencing Guidelines). Granted, you could say that this is sign not that violence is minimized, but that drug possession is particularly frowned upon.

Is sex-driven violence inevitable? As Yochai observed, no matter how hard you try, you can’t stop little boys from fighting. Maybe it is a waste of resources to fight “reasonable” amounts of violence, though where the threshold of reasonableness falls is unclear.