So recently, I've been exploring evolutionary psychology angle.
Here are some of the things I've commonly come across when it comes to this topic. Note, some of the things I say here are often what I read or hear about them, not that I buy into it.
Men often have low investment as they can produce thousands of sperm within minutes, whereas women produces rare eggs which once fertilizes, needs to be carried for 9 months which comes with gastation and post-partum. Makes sense. I remember birth control being made so the biological concerns a lot of women would have won't be an issue.
Most men are opportunistic for sex. They have a natural desire to spread their seed and a greater need to sleep with most people. A woman is naturally reserved, gets drained from casual sex (as they tend to associate sex with emotional connection, intimacy, and security), and usually has it under the influence of alcohol. They don't derive pleasure from casual sex like men do. There's also statements for LGBTQ members too, like most gay men being promiscuous and lesbians not so much. (so for gay men "sex with no emotions" whereas for lesbians "emotions with no sex").
Most men are naturally active when it comes to pursuing sex, and those behaviours are usually at an unconscious level, while most women are usually reserved or responsive during courtship at an unconscious level. I think of masculine & feminine energies when I hear this.
The above is usually what I hear. Now from my understanding, evolutionary psychology is largely an interpretive/explanatory framework for why broad trends happen, looking at it from a biological standpoint. So explanations tend to be probablistic, not deterministic (tho in the case of conservatives, they make it deterministic).
The point of evolutionary psychology is to find out consistencies between the differences between men and women, and use a mix of biological and historical context to prove those consistencies, even factoring in egalitarian societies of today.
But my main gripe with this is that not only does most discussions of evolutionary psychology hyperfocus on broad trends, they tend to dismiss minority cases and not look much deep into it. Sometimes, we just get dismissed as individual variations. And when they do focus on minority members (like LGBTQ for example) they focus on the broad trends, but not on the minority cases.
So that means the following individual cases:
Men who aren't opportunistic for sex nor a natural desire to spread their seed.
Men who are more feminine in terms of personality and sexual desires
Women with high sex drives, who are more masculine and actually desire a more softer male partner
Men who want to work in women oriented spaces, and women wanting to work in male oriented spaces
Overall, men and women who's sense of self doesn't fit neatly into the typical cases and largely deviate from what's considered the norm.
Isn't really given much focus to find out the potential reason for their existences, what broad trends are there, and how this enriches our current understanding of evolutionary psychology.
On one hand, I get that a lot of us are born with biological wirings for specific temperaments, attraction patterns, interest, way of life, and we should be in touch with that as individuals. But I also feel with the way our current understanding of it is setup, it'll lead to more deterministic discussions. A lot of people who talk about evo psych tend to zero in on the broad trends in other aspects of life that when it comes to those outside of that trend, they rarely have anything of substance to contribute that would help us enrich our own lives.
So I'm wondering at what point should we start questioning our understanding of evolutionary psychology? Another question would be at what point do we realize that evolutionary psychology might not be reflective of the current reality we're living in?
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