David Buss is an American evolutionary psychologist who studies human mating and sex differences from the perspective of his area of expertise. He has written numerous books that have been generally well-received and is held in high esteem by many for his contributions to his field. However, he has also received some, I would say sometimes quite compelling, criticism from other quarters.
My focus for this essay will be on the ideas in one of his books in particular : ‘Bad Men : The hidden roots of sexual sexual deception, harassment and assault’. Although similar ideas can be found in his other work as well such as ‘ The Evolution of Desire: strategies of human mating.
As the title of Bad Men suggests the book makes the high claim of being able to reveal ‘the hidden roots’ of sexual conflict between men and women. It contains many challenging views and claims and I am particularly interested here in some of the academic criticism made of this book and the implications of some of its theories.
Buss is an evolutionary psychologist and is therefore looking at problems like rape, sexual harassment, IPV ( intimate partner violence) and differences in male and female sexual behaviour and preferences, from the perspective of evolutionary theory, or rather, theory coming out the field of evolutionary psychology. Now it might be worth saying at this stage that EP (evolutionary psychology) is a somewhat controversial field that has its fair share of detractors from both within and outside of academia.
Speaking as something of a layman in this area, I will refrain from wading into these debates to any great degree, but will simply state that my impression from the outside is that EP can offer some interesting insights or at least theories that are worth considering and grappling with. However, it’s also true that it has sometimes been misused for political or ideological purposes and as well as producing some valid contributions has also produced plenty of claims or theories that are questionable or possibly just downright wrong or misleading. At any rate, my interest here is not in offering an outright defence of the field, or an outright attack on it’s credentials either.
However, to be perfectly open with you readers, my first impressions on contact with Buss’s contributions to his subject were generally positive. Many of his claims have made quite good sense to me and have seemed at least reasonably convincing. However, I am a long way from being an academic expert on these fraught and enormously complex topics and so in keeping with a spirit of intellectual humility I will not claim to be completely convinced either way about all the claims Buss or others like him make.
Our endeavours to understand the true causes and nature of things like sex differences in sexual preferences or ‘mating strategies’ or of aggression, rape, the origins and nature of ‘patriarchy’ and so on, are ongoing and should always be, in the interests of good science, open to challenge and revision. My own feeling is that there is till a lot of work to be done in understanding these things and we as human beings sometimes have a tendency to overestimate our knowledge and understanding of the world. Perhaps our understanding of these matters is no exception.
Anyway, as one online reviewer puts it: Buss’s thesis — which is extremely well supported by the research data — is that male and female sexuality is, in general, different, and that these differences produce conflict, sometimes in strange and subtle ways.
The idea that male and female sexuality, in general, is different, may seem entirely uncontroversial and a matter of common sense to many readers, and perhaps most people in general. However, the extent to which these on average differences between male and female sexuality are the product of biology, or of societal and cultural pressures or expectations remains an open question. Surely, the answer lies in a combination of these factors, but the point is that some commentators will tend to put most, or sometimes all, of the emphasis on the former and others on the latter. Where you come down on questions like these is likely to indicate quite a bit about your gender politics more broadly. With many conservative commentators on gender issues tending to favour more biologically-based explanations, and more progressive-minded people favouring explanations that stress how much culture plays a role in differences between men and women.
My own impression, for what its worth, is that these debates are often held back by a false dichotomy that sees culture and biology as being fundamentally exclusive categories that can be seen as always distinct from one another. In reality, however, they are surely intertwined and interconnected and interact with each other in ways that are deeply complex and often difficult to disentangle. Human beings are unique in the world of living creatures on earth in our ability to create ‘culture’ that we can then self-consciously examine and change through our own efforts. These efforts, though do also have their limits. We are, after all, still animals that are deeply influenced by our biological impulses and hard-wiring. It is likely we will never be able to fully escape from this reality, the wishes of some of the more extreme transhumanists not withstanding. But in any case, as I’ve just mentioned, these two forces interact with and influence one another in important ways. Our culture is influenced by our biology and this is even to some extent true the the other way around as well.
For example to quote one online source:
Through cultural innovation and changes in habitat and ecology, there have been a number of major dietary shifts in human evolution, including meat eating, cooking, and those associated with plant and animal domestication.
Our bodies have adapted over time to dietary changes. But these dietary changes were, at least to some extent, often the product of changes we could classify as being cultural: such as the discovery and development of new tools, the development of new forms of social organisation such as farming and so on. Hence the interaction.
Buss never denies altogether the influence of culture on human mating or sexual behaviours of course, and in fact as we will see he does recognise it is crucial in certain respects, especially in relation to men’s desire for control over women within patriarchal culture, as we shall see.
But he is of course, for the most part,interested in evolutionary explanations. For instance, a common theory in EP, that Buss subscribes to, is that human males tend to, on average, have a much stronger interest in sexual variety and casual sex primarily because of the asymmetrical nature of the human reproductive process itself.
Or to quote one online source:
Parental investment theory enables evolutionary psychologists to formulate hypotheses and make predictions regarding sex differences in mating strategy. According to this theory, the sex that is physiologically required to invest more in offspring evolves to be more choosy regarding mates, because a mating error (mating with a low-quality or noninvesting partner) is more costly to that sex. In other words, it is in the reproductive interest of the higher-investing sex (actually, their genes) to avoid mating with low-quality mates. In contrast, it is in the reproductive interest of the non- or lesser-investing sex to be intrasexually competitive in order to gain access to members of the more valuable sex. In the vast majority of mammals, females are physiologically required to invest more heavily on their offspring; thus, they have evolved to be the choosier sex.
This parental investment theory as it relates to differences in male and female sexuality and mating strategies is one of the key theories of the field of EP and Buss discusses it at length in Bad Men. As he writes at the beginning of the book:
Female choosiness — deciding who qualifies for interaction, relationship escalation, and sexual access — is a good candidate for the first principle of mating, and this book will explain why.
The ‘explaining why’ that Buss offers is basically the parental investment theory.
He goes on to cite various studies and research that suggest that men on average tend to want to wait a lot less time before having sex for the time with a new partner, are more interested in casual, emotionally low-investment sex, in having multiple sexual partners, are more likely to fantasise about sex with multiple different people and so on.
Now, just to add a personal note, as a man I can attest that I feel that my sexuality is pretty much geared in exactly this way. From the first blossoming of my sexual feelings I’m pretty sure that it has been this way, and although of course I can’t be 100% sure how much of this was and still is influenced by social and cultural factors rather than my hardwired biological drives, it has always just seemed pretty natural to me and not something I’ve ever felt I have had much conscious control over.
However, perhaps I digress, and I am but one man after all.
Buss goes on to describe how these differences between men and women naturally tend towards conflict as our sexual strategies or wants often conflict. With men seeking ways of getting more casual low-investment sex from women and getting sex sooner after initial contact and women looking to buy more time or more investment and so on. I think you get the picture.
However, some more social-constructivist inclined critics would argue that actually male sexuality tends to be shaped in this way by the expectations of society as much as biology. For example, in our societies, men tend to receive praise for being promiscuous whereas women are shamed for the same behaviour. And in patriarchal culture, the sexual needs and interests of men are tolerated or encouraged whereas female sexually has historically been repressed and controlled. Or at least this has been the case in the Christian West or in the cultures of the major Abrahamic religions more generally.
It seems there are also some critics, especially women or feminist ones, who dislike what this seems to imply about female sexuality.
It is true that historically female sexuality has often been poorly understood and often repressed and tightly controlled. At least in some cultures, including our own in the West. The admission that men may just be a lot ‘hornier’ than women seems to reinforce this historical prejudice that women are sexually passive and often not that interested in sex at all.
Whereas we now know that this is false. I’ve experienced in my personal life, for instance, women baulk at the idea that women are not as horny or sexual as men. Celebrating and empowering female sexuality is often pushed as an important aspect of a certain kind of modern feminist thinking. And anything that appears to go against this tends to grate a little bit. As I have mentioned,in terms of the historical background of female sexual repression, this is very much understandable. And fully understanding and giving proper expression to female sexuality is important.
However, I do think that some of these critics are perhaps slightly misconstruing the kind of descriptions of male and female sexuality that writers like Buss give. Simply stating that men may on average be more interested in causal sex and multiple sexual partners is not necessarily to say that men have more sexual desire than women or that their sexuality is somehow ‘more’ or ‘greater’ than women’s. If by ‘desire’ we are referring to strength of feeling or passion not just the frequency of that feeling.
Female sexuality may be different and often less ‘driven’ in the way that men’s is, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that women are less interested in sex or desire it less. They may, in general, be more likely to be interested in different kinds of sex or sex of a greater quality with one trusted partner rather than multiple partners and so on.
And again, we are speaking in general here. This is not to say all women will be sexually inclined in this way. There will be plenty of women that aren’t. Plenty of women who are interested in casual sex for example, but that doesn’t mean that the general difference couldn’t still hold.
And again, none of this is to necessarily imply that this means women’s sexuality is less intense, or less powerful, or less profound than men’s. It is simply to say that it may well be different.
I, for one, certainly don’t think that women are less sexual than men.
But I do think that male and female sexuality is different and many of the studies cited and conclusions given by Buss in this area do ring true for me, even if just based on personal experience and observations, talking to men and women about these things and so on.
However, cultural influences can surely play an important part in all of this too.
For example, in his paper ‘When Academicians Mislead Readers’ academic Ferrel M Chistensen, in critiquing Buss’ view of these matters writes:
the book repeatedly says that females have less sexual desire than males, listing it as a source of conflict. This is assuredly true in our culture, but it may be that women’s sexual desire is merely more flexible, to fit social or individual conditions, hence can be as strong as men’s — either is compatible with sexual selection. Anthropologist Bengt Danielsson’s euphemistically titled “Love in the South Seas” (1956) is one good source of information about women’s sexuality in earlier human cultures. Indeed, before Polynesia became so fully Christianized, it was a duty of aunts and uncles to teach sexual techniques to very young nieces and nephews, respectively, so that they would have a lifetime of sexual pleasure.
Christensen here makes an important point about how the way in which female sexuality is viewed and expressed in a society can be heavily influenced by culture. In cultures where there are fewer controls or taboos around female sexuality women express their sexuality more freely and therefore in a way that conforms much less with our dominant view that women tend to be much less interested in promiscuity and causal sex than men are. The critic goes on to give a personal anecdote where he describes an experience he had in Waikiki:
Though a brief personal anecdote can have little force, one of mine from the 1970’s left a strong impression on me as regards cultural female sexual flexibility. As I entered a laundromat in Waikiki, my eyes were met by an admiring gaze from a young Polynesian (but facially not Hawaiian) woman. I could do nothing at that point but arrange my basket-load of clothing in the nearest available washer. When I stood up, she was standing casually at the next washer. To start a conversation, I asked where she was from, and her answer was Bora-Bora. When I continued the conversation by remarking that it would be an interesting place for me to visit, her response was that if I went, I would surely be raped by females because of my good looks. From her smiling demeanor and subsequent words, it quickly became clear that she didn’t mean literal rape, merely an aggressive physical embrace that would not be continued if I was uncompliant — though compliance was anticipated in her culture.
It is important to note here that by ‘rape’ the woman in the story doesn’t literally mean rape, but rather that the women she describes in her culture will happily make forward, even aggressive sexual advances at men they find attractive. This is an interesting example of how female sexual expression can vary significantly depending on culture. It is an important point, albeit an anecdotal one, something the writer does recognise as perhaps limiting its force.
However, I would suggest that this does not necessarily disprove any of Buss’s (and numerous other writers in this area) specific claims about men on average tending to prefer more partners and having more interest in casual sex.
There are surely cultures where women have been more open about their sexuality and their sexual needs and some, if the Christensen’s anecdote is anything to by ( and he does also provide more supporting evidence for this view from other writers) where it is culturally acceptable for women to quite aggressively make the first move. But just because women might approach the human mating dance differently in these cultures and be encouraged to be more open about their own sexual needs, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all the research in more modern or Western contexts that tend to show large difference between male and female attitudes towards things like casual sex are wrong for women in general cross-culturally.
Nowhere in Buss’s book for example, does he claim that women don’t lust after men they find attractive or desire to make the first move sometimes, or that they would never make the first move or be more sexually aggressive if our culture was more accepting of these kinds of behaviour.
In general, however, I believe Christensen is making a valid point, and an important one that is worth thinking about. It is quite likely that a lot of modern research conducted in the West on these questions is coloured by Western bias that ignores practices in other cultures or evidence from the historical record that may upset some of our prevailing assumptions. Or it may be based on cherry-picking examples from other cultures that simply confirm the pre-existing assumption underpinning the theory in question. These are fair criticisms to make.
Christensen levels plenty of criticism at Buss in general. He accuses him of ignorance and deliberate oversight. But perhaps of particular interest to me here is the way this critic accuses Buss of pandering to a kind of anti-male bigotry or prejudice in his conclusions and analysis and of mischaracterising the nature of ‘patriarchy’ and men’s tendencies or behaviour within it. For example he writes:
Another omission from Buss’s book that is crucial to the sexual issues he discusses is the debate among evolutionary psychologists on the origin of patriarchy, rule by older males. One school of thought is that humans began as warring patriarchal apes, and Buss’s comments constantly indicate that he belongs to this school; patriarchy is the result of natural male nastiness. The other view claims that organized war and patriarchy developed only very recently in evolutionary time. But this book’s author never even mentions this highly germane dispute; he just presents his own view to the reader as fact.
‘ natural male nastiness’ . This is interesting.
The theory here being that if human beings began as violent apes, or rather male humans did, in that they were the ones being violent, then this explains the modern human male tendency towards violence. Men just have a natural tendency towards violence that has its roots in our ancient, primordial past, when it was routinely used to acquire social status and dominance or resources, and this has been carried over into our present human condition. The writer has more sympathy for the different view mentioned in the quote above — that organised war and patriarchy actually developed much more recently in our evolutionary history. And he seems to be implying, at least as I understand it, that Buss may be consciously admitting the possibility of this theory because it is much less amenable to his view that male violence is often simply an expression of men’s desire for patriarchal control over women via aggression and that this is enabled by men’s greater natural propensity for physical violence.
Chistensen goes on to describe the theory that ‘patriarchy’ actually developed from the development of farming:
We humans were all once hunter-gatherers and it was at most 10,000 years ago that other forms of economy appeared on earth. These other economies were various forms of farming and herding which, for reasons I cannot go into here, gave rise to endless cycles of population explosion and warfare which have had an enormous impact on the relative value placed on men and women, men’s work and women’s work…. [Patriarchy develops] in response to the need to produce generation after generation of young men who will see it as only fitting and proper that “real men” are those who can, if called upon, be warriors who may be killed or kill other human beings….
This is fascinating.
I won’t lend my support to any one of these theories about the origins of patriarchy here, but we should be reminded by these kinds of debates, just how contested a lot of these questions still are. And also that in our tendency to focus on the wrongdoing of men throughout history and their oppression of women we shouldn’t lose sight of the real driving structural and historical forces or conditions that inspired these arrangements, and in which men also suffered enormously. Most of human history has been terrible for all people. Men and women. Whereas listening to some feminists commentators on the patriarchy you would be forgiven for imagining that men have been having a great time of it all these centuries until there power was suddenly challenged in the last 100 years or so.
Or as Camille Paglia once brilliantly put it:
Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.
Well-said!
Now just to anticipate any accusations that might come flying my way on publication of this piece, this is not me trying to dunk on all feminists. I realise not all feminists hold to a simplistic view of the history of gender in human society or of patriarchal culture. The quote given above does come after all from a self-described feminist, albeit a pretty heterodox one. And I even use the term ‘feminist’ in discussions such as these with almost a feeling of reluctance, for I realise that feminism is not one monolithic thing; it has always contained a good deal of internal variety and disagreement, even if it does tend to cohere around certain core commitments or beliefs. This can not always be captured in a generalised use of the term ‘feminist’ for people I may disagree with or be critical of in relation to certain issues. And to be clear I am not anti-feminist.
I think there has been much that has been good and necessary in the feminist movement, not least the campaign for equal rights for women under the law. However, I think a rather simplistic understanding of the patriarchy has filtered down into the general discourse on gender today. One that often seems to rest on a lack of real historical knowledge or understanding and that portrays men as forever the cruel oppressors throughout history without fully appreciating the complexity of how male-dominated institutions came into being int he first place.
History has often been a cruel place for men and women and most of our institutions and societal systems have developed out of the need for protection and survival in a dangerous and unpredictable environment. This does’t mean we have to live with these arrangements today, but trying to really understand their nature and origins should be about a search for real understanding not just simplistic talk about males forever playing the role of violent oppressors of females just because they are cruel or must hate women and girls and naturally seek domination and control in all areas of life. If this is not what many feminists think and argue, as I’m sure it isn’t, then great, but my point is that a particular interpretation of history that offers little in the way of deep causal explanations of patriarchy or more objective analysis in general, is often what seeps into popular cultural discussions on these topics. It often obscures more than it enlightens, and in my view acts more as a way for some women to find catharsis in pointing the finger at men as culpable in general just as men rather than seeking a more objective understanding men often came to assume the roles they did in the firs place. And how these conditions also adversely affected men themselves. And still do to this day.
Chistensen goes on to question Buss’s claim in his book that men seek to control women out of a desire for ‘patriarchal control’. And here I am less sure of his arguments. He characterises Buss’ belief as such anyway and takes issue with it in the following way:
A large part of the book is focused on physical partner aggression (sexual abuse is discussed separately), which it blithely attributes to patriarchal control. But its discussion is seriously biased in various ways.
Christensen gives examples of studies that seem to contradict the prevailing view that it is men who are generally controlling in relationships and that most domestic abuse only flows in one direction:
There have been literally hundreds of sociological surveys asking people anonymously what they have done and suffered in this regard, beginning with the work of eminent sociologists Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz in the 1970s — which found statistical equality of such aggression between women and men, by women’s own admission Straus et al., (1980). Literally hundreds of similar surveys have been conducted since then, getting basically that same result and expanding on it.
After citing more studies that seem to be giving indications in the same direction Christensen claims that such studies have been systematically and widely suppressed:
If the reader has not heard any of this information before, the reason is that it has been widely suppressed — in public sources and even in some academic ones.
Now I must make clear here that Chistensen is not citing these studies as evidence that these are settled questions and that he fully accepts all of the findings in these studies. He is citing them as a way of criticising Buss for the perceived lack of balance that he demonstrates by completely ignoring these kinds of studies.
He writes:
Sociology is not a rigorous science, and I cannot here address the possible sources of error in all these studies. But my point in writing a book review is to assess, not any final truths, but the author’s accuracy and honesty regarding the current state of the evidence. Of course, not all those hooting ideologues Gelles mentions were academics; but all wanted to believe that only or virtually only men are violent in the home, scientific evidence be damned.
What he claims to be the desire on the part of some researchers to ‘believe that only or virtually only men are violent in the home’ he attributes to what he sees as a widespread anti-male bigotry, which he sees as impacting other areas of research and our understanding of some gender-based issues more generally as well. In relation to his own post-retirement activist work he writes about the problem of some women lying about violence in divorce courts and writes:
It is crucially important to point out the real-life consequences of the anti-male stereotyping regarding partner violence.
He describes from his own experience men ‘who came to our local parenting-equality group for help driven to insanity and suicide by this bias’.
Pretty grim stuff.
Of course we could write all day about women’s real experiences of violence as well, but Christensen is not giving these anecdotes as a way of grabbing all the much-needed attention and focus away from female victims of violence but in order to inject some balance into a debate that he sees writers such as Buss as not being altogether honest about.
I’m sure writers on medium will have their own anecdotes and or studies or statistics that they will feel the need to share. My interest on this particular point is not to support one study or set statistics over another but I quote extensively here as way of giving a sense of Christen’s problems with Buss’ work. Perhaps these criticisms of Buss are unfair. I’m not so sure.
I would encourage readers to read Bad Men and the critique of it written in Christensen’s When Academicians mslead readers that I have quoted from extensively above. You can make up your own minds. I have offered some of my own thoughts in here but there is much more that Christensen writes about his piece and much more that I could have written about what he has to say and about these topics in general. However, covering it all would have required thousands more words and dear reader I don’t want to bore you.
The overall sense though from Chistensen is that Buss doesn’t treat his subject matter fairly and in particular is not always fair towards men in his characterisation of them in general ( and but boo hoo, stop it with the male fragility I can already hear some feminists int he comments section scream!) The important point here though being that this can have real-world consequences and can always just veer into intellectual slopiness or inaccuracy. We should all be aiming for truth and fairness in dealing with these issues in my view, so I believe that Christensen could at least be onto something.
As I have said elsewhere on medium, I believe feminists ought to care about tackling prejudice, bias and unfairness, when it affects either sex. The force of their egalitarian arguments, or at least those arguments that they do profess to be about egalitarianism, would be all the more powerful as a result.
Reading Buss’ Bad Men is not easy. It is quite harrowing to read in large parts and I think men ought to read it to get a sense of what many women face in the form of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. The subject matter is unpleasant but ti is all too real part of women’s experiences in this world. Men ought to show some interest.
On a different note, reading as a non-expert, one can also be misled or ill-informed by such popular social science books. Perhaps the jury is still out on this one for me but I would suggest reading it and similar works critically.
Experts or supposed experts can often quite easily fool the non-expert reading public into believing that certain beliefs or perspectives are much less contested or settled than they really are. If one is not familiar with the whole of the subject area then this can easily happen. And perhaps there are worse places to start for a critical reading of Buss’ work and other works like it than Christensen’s critique that I quoted from extensively in this article.
However, sometimes non-experts can be just as keen and insightful in their readings of academic works as anyone else. We can all reason and question things on our own terms and develop the skill of crtical thinking in our own time. So I’ve decided to finish this essay by quoting from a review left by a woman on the goodreads website. Just your average punter I suppose but somehow the fact that she is a woman struck me as significant. My sense is that sometimes the views of more moderate women commenting on these topics are drowned out on the internet by a cacophony of more radical ideological feminist voices. Now this not to say that what we hear from the cacophony is necessarily wrong or untrue, and in some cases it may just be a matter of opinion, or value judgements, things we can all disagree over, but let’s a give a look in to one of the quieter voices as well shall we:
This woman gives Buss’ book one star, and explains some of her reasons:
In all cases where Buss talks about large sex differences in When Men Behave Badly, he ignores studies that have contradicted the findings he cites, giving the impression that those he cites are the only relevant science and that his conclusions are uncontested when they are not.
For example, scholars have redone studies of receptivity to casual sexual encounters, controlling for predicted pressure, risk, and reputation, which caused the gap in receptivity to converge. Differences in number of desired partners also converge under a bogus pipeline condition. Additionally, while differences persist, what is notable is how they change over time and across cultures with increasing gender equality.
She makes an interesting point here, and in reference to my earlier claim about being open to changing my mind on the question of whether men’s generally higher interest in engaging with more sexual partners and casual sex is primarily driven by biology rather than social and cultural pressures, I will make an effort to look for and study the kinds of studies that this woman is alluding to. Although unfortunately she doesn’t give any sources or links for these studies. Commentators on here feel welcome to nudge me in the right direction if you have any suggestions.
Although do be warned that commandments to ‘ go and educate yourself ’ will not necessarily be taken without at least a little irritation! For as I hope I’ve made clear I have been trying with this whole education thing!
She then goes on to write:
Throughout the book, Buss argues that men are evolved to oppress, control, manipulate, and harm women. He argues that such proclivities in men are biological and nearly universal.
As someone who is loved and supported by many male friends and family members, reading this hurt deeply. I’ve had to question if my trust has been misplaced, if I am willfully blind.
What bothers me on a deep level is why a man would want to write a book about how men are evolved to hate and oppress women and why other men, like Steven Pinker, would recommend it. As for the women who have lauded this book, I question what has gone on in their lives that they would accept such a hostile account of gender relations as in our nature.
As hard as it is for me to hold onto my beliefs about the goodness of men after reading this, my lived experience tells an entirely different story. And I deeply hope that both men and women can hold men to higher standards so that my experience can be more common in this world.
Yes, let’s hope her experiences can become more common in this world.
But she is perhaps also right to question whether men really have ‘evolved to oppress, control, manipulate and harm women’.
Thanks for reading!
