Noli Irritare Leones

Phila at Echidne of the Snakes takes exception to The Latest Research reported by the Telegraph. The Telegraph had reported on research by Professor Anne Campbell of Durham University, showing that women reported less happiness with one-night stands than men did; the article attributes the difference to women being less “adapted” for casual sex. Phila thinks otherwise:

Could this have anything to do with what has come to constitute “appropriate” behavior for men and women in this situation…exacerbated, perhaps, by certain small but important differences in physiology?

Actually, what surprises me about the report isn’t the fact that the men are self-reporting more happiness with casual sex and more willingness to boast to their friends about it; it’s the degree of happiness with casual sex across the board. 80% of the men, and even 54% of the women, in this particular survey, reported being happier with one-night stands than not. I’d actually have expected more negative experiences than that. On the other hand, I can’t read too much into these numbers, given that it’s an Internet survey, and, who knows, maybe people who like casual sex are more likely to take Internet surveys asking about experiences with casual sex.

The question that always comes to my mind when I see such articles is whether the conclusions drawn in the article are those of the researcher, or those of the reporter; sometimes, especially when it comes to research on sex differences, papers like the Telegraph have their own spin, which turns out to be different from what you find out the researcher is saying. In this case, though, the Telegraph article is actually pretty close to the press release from Durham University describing the research. Professor Anne Campbell is an evolutionary psychologist who specializes in studying sex differences “with special emphasis upon female aggression, both as an end in itself and because it may illuminate the more physically dangerous nature of male aggression.” She has written a book called A mind of her own: The evolutionary psychology of women. It looks as if her work is in one sense a challenge to feminism, and in another sense a challenge to those versions of evolutionary psychology that see women in a passive role. From a page describing her book:

‘In her readable and thought-provoking account, Campbell argues that there are profound differences between women, and that this is both a cause and a consequence of directional selection on female psychology… Campbell provides an excellent taxonomy of nine classes of feminism This book will stimulate an important debate and ensure that evolution cannot be ignored.’ – Anne Magurran, Times Literary Supplement

…

Theories of human evolution portray ancestral men as active individuals who shaped future generations by testosterone-driven competition, creating a critical gulf between reproductive winners and losers. But what role is left for women within such evolutionary thinking? Their role has been constricted to mere consumers of the fruits of male competition accepting the winning male genes to pass to their children. Allegedly devoid of the need and capacity for competition amongst themselves, women could be neither winners nor losers in the reproductive stakes and so could contribute nothing to the genetic variability that drives selection. Is it any wonder that feminists are dismissive of such evolutionary approaches? That many have sought to ignore the contribution that evolutionary theory can make to our understanding of women? But have women really just been bit part actors in the whole story of evolution? Have they not played their own role in ensuring their reproductive success?…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 7:16 am and is filed under Feminism, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.