Bateman’s Principle and Male Sexual Success (in Humans)

Reasonable_Mouse789 · 2025-10-04T04:25:19+00:00

It wouldn’t matter if every woman wanted to sleep with every man using condoms (avoiding pregnancy). There would still be too many men looking for sex. Due to ovulation, periods, etc., a smaller fraction of the women who do have an otherwise equal libido to men will want it at any time. Additionally, women, on average, prefer a lower frequency of sex than men. Combine this with issues like the increased risk for women, and sometimes enthusiasm or skill issues, and you are going to end up with a lot of men not getting casual sex.

AngeAware · 2025-10-04T12:35:08+00:00

There was a massive study on adult virginity lately.

The modern picture at least seems more complicated than what Bateman's Principle suggests. The conclusion of that wasn't just "hot/rich dudes hoarding the women", there were other factors involved including substance use, education (as in more educated people are more likely to be late in life virgins), and living in an area where there are simply more men than women.

NoDanaOnlyZuuI · 2025-10-04T13:32:26+00:00

when we shift from reproductive success to sexual success

That’s exactly where your argument falls apart.

Bateman’s Principle is about offspring count, not number of partners. Once you make that leap, biology stops reliably predicting outcomes - culture, birth control, and personal choice take over.

Switching to sexual success is like checking someone’s blood sugar by measuring their blood pressure, once you change what you’re measuring, the principle no longer applies and the conclusions aren’t valid.

Outside_Memory5703 · 2025-10-04T12:54:32+00:00

Or, men are hornier than women

BobtheArcher2018 · 2025-10-04T15:02:33+00:00

Your posts reveal a pattern here: a lack of requisite nuance. Yes, Bateman's observations apply to humans to some degree. But the 'to some degree' is what matters. Devil is in the Details here.

Lift_and_Lurk · 2025-10-04T12:53:43+00:00

2007, Snyder and Gowaty published an in-depth analysis of the data in Bateman's 1948 paper. They found sampling biases, mathematical errors, and selective presentation of data.[9] In 2012 and 2013, Gowaty, Kim, and Anderson repeated Bateman's experiment in its entirety, staying as close to Bateman's published methodology as possible.[10][6] They found that upon combining certain fly strains with one another, the offspring were unable to survive to adulthood. Thus, Bateman's results regarding the number of individuals not having mated was too high. This was valid for both the males and females.[6] A further source of error is that chromosome effects caused a greater percentage of mutations in males (than in females) to be lethal before reaching sexual maturity.[6] Gowaty explored the reason for the premature death of the Drosophila. She began doing so by running monogamy trials between different strains of flies and found that 25% of the offspring died due to becoming double mutants.[6][11] Bateman thought his work fit within the lines of Mendel's laws of genetics, while Gowaty proved otherwise. The 1948 experiments inferred reproductive success based on the number of adults living by the end of the trial. In reality, many factors were left out of the equation when calculating reproductive success as a function of the number of mates, thereby undermining the accuracy behind Bateman's results. Gowaty was not able to confirm Bateman's conclusions and found no evidence for sexual selection in the experiment.[6][10][12][11] Other analyses of Bateman's experimental design and statistical technique identified further shortcomings. Birkhead wrote a 2000 review arguing that since Bateman's experiments lasted only three to four days, the female fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, may not have needed to mate repeatedly, as it can store sperm for up to four days; if Bateman had used a species in which females had to copulate more often to fertilize their eggs, the results might have been different. A 2012 review by Zuleyma Tang-Martínez concluded that various empirical and theoretical studies, especially Gowaty's inability to replicate the results of Bateman's original experiment, pose a major challenge to Bateman's conclusions, and that Bateman's principle should be considered an unproven hypothesis in need of further reexamination.[10] According to Tang-Martínez, "modern data simply don't support most of Bateman's and Trivers's predictions and assumptions."[12]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman%27s_principle

Sutherland argued that males' higher variance in reproductive success may result from random mating and coincidence.[13] Hubbell and Johnson suggested that variance in reproductive success can be greatly influenced by chance differences in lifespan and by lengths of post-mating latency (period of sexual inactivity).[14] In 2005, Gowaty and Hubbell published a simulation study showing that variance in mating success can be due to the time available for mating as well as fitness characteristics of available mates.[15] They argued that there are cases in which males can be more "choosy" (that is, selective) than females, whereas Bateman suggested that his paradigm of female choosiness would be "almost universal" among sexually reproducing species. Critics proposed that females might be more subject to sexual selection than males, but not in all circumstances.[16]

Equivalent_Dance2278 · 2025-10-04T09:43:42+00:00

Why do you guys constantly do this? You take scientific data and apply it to humans Willy-nilly, when that data has never been applied to humans.

For the ones who don’t know…. Bateman’s principle was what he concluded while studying Fruit flies. You know, the insect that can lay a bunch of eggs at the same time, unlike humans. So everything about male sexual success shows equal success for the female flies. There is pushback on his data even for the fruit flies. But even if there wasn’t, you cannot apply it to animals, much less, to humans.

Just like Briffaults law, which you love to apply to humans, when BRIFFAULT HIMSELF said it cannot be applied to humans. So why do you all keep doing it?

Lemon_gecko · 2025-10-04T04:57:56+00:00

Hm, do you think it's right to mix social and culture customs with biology? There were many instances where it was opposite of each other. So basically can we make conclusion about biology by studying culture and history?

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SexCrispies · 2025-10-04T17:26:03+00:00

Bateman’s principle predicts that male reproductive success increases with more mating opportunities, while female reproductive success is limited by biology.

When we shift from reproductive success (offspring count) to sexual success (frequency of sex, number of partners), the same asymmetry persists, but the outcomes get socially and culturally reshaped.

How is female sexual success limited by biology?

Frequency of sex and number of sex partners are mainly determined by libido and mating effort, as well as mating strategy/personality and by that extension, sociosexuality. There is variance in male mating strategies, even at the very top level, when it comes to going for lots of partners vs focusing on one. Reproductive success does not only depend on the numer of pregnancies that a man caused, but on if those children make it to reproductive age and how fit they are themselves. If just "spreading seed" and not caring was vastly superior to focusing on one high value partner and taking care of a limited number of kids, then this strategy would not have become a stable one in evolutionary terms. Short term mating optimizers vs long term mating optimizers, etc. All those tradeoffs between the different strategies are there because they are all valid and work(ed) good enough.

Monopolization of many partners does not happen on any scale that is relevant for population dynamics regarding sexual success.

Sexual markets reflect the different mating strategies. Equal outcomes are not possible and not the goal. Different opportunities are directly based in personality and mating strategy. You cannot equalize opportunity without forcing people to change their personality (for example when you think about introversion/extraversion, interests, social behavior).

Enforced monogamy doesn't keep people from fucking in secrecy. That is a really naive take. The same mating strategies and personalities always existed and they found their ways to act on that.

High-risk, high-reward: Some men achieve huge sexual success; others achieve none.

Rather, some men have personalities/mating strategies that strive for huge sexual success, while others do not.

Yes, men fiercely compete for sexual access, but not for "as much as possible" and not "for whatever price" and not "with whatever kind of sexual partner". There is a huge variance in mating strategies and consequently the goals that men want to achieve.

Wanting to steer things towards equality is impossible and also not wanted.

Bateman’s Principle and Male Sexual Success (in Humans)

Bateman’s Principle and Male Sexual Success (in Humans)

1. Core Idea

2. Variance in Male Sexual Success

3. Male Competition and Sexual Access

4. Male Sexual Success in Cultural Contexts

5. Implications of Bateman’s Principle for Male Sexual Success

Comments

Title	Bateman’s Principle and Male Sexual Success (in Humans)
Author	0EMR
Upvotes	8
Comments	47
Date	October 4, 2025 3:56 AM UTC (9 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1nxjyi6/batemans_principle_and_male_sexual_success_in/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/batemans-principle-and-male-sexual-success-in.1563403 https://theredarchive.com/post/1563403