In a pithily-titled post the pithily-languaged non-sex blogger WaterTiger ofDependable Renegade provides a valuable critique of male stereotypes

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Eliot Spitzer wasn’t driven by “prehistoric nature“.  He was driven by the need to exert power and influence and by a pathological need to get caught.  So let’s not rehash this tired old bromide about men needing to spread their seed in order to excuse inexcusable behavior. This “evolutionary psychology” crap belongs on fucking rightwing nutjob “Dr.” Laura Schlessinger’s website.

If Eliot Spitzer had kept it in his goddamned pants, or at least not been so goddamned stupid about it, we wouldn’t be faced with Joe Bruno as Lieutenant Governor.

WaterTiger said it here.

Yeah, can we just dispense with this Victorian-logic, reductionist “spreading our seed” imperative whereby if men can ejaculate frequently then not only must we do so frequently we must do it only for reproduction! In this regard, at least, the “progress” away from the term “sociobiology” and towards “evolutionary psychology” is a step down hill. Because I mean hello, do humans only eat for purposes of nourishment, build structures for shelter, or jump in the water to fish, rinse, or escape fire? No! In fact I believe there’s this thing called “social behavior” where that whole sex business might also come into play.

I mean, those guys are just so into comparing humans to other animals, right? (For which proclivity Hannah Arendt coined the term “rat-opomorphism”) A-a-a-and don’t other primates (at least) use opposite and same-sex non-reproductive behavior in status, bonding, and relaxation activities? Why yes they do, don’t they? Therefore why not humans?

So even if we took the as-yet-still-speculative unsubstantiatable evolutionary that makes it into the papers (as opposed to the legitimate, but not yet-very-relevant-to-sex-scandals findings of real evolutionary biologists) then there’d still be an explanation for Spitzer’s antics that a) didn’t rely on semen-conservation doctrine and b) provides an explanation that corresponds to observed behavior.

And I say “corresponds to observed behavior” because, seriously, if the theory went that all male sexual behavior was reproductive then why all the fuss about ass-to-mouth in porn? And by that I mean fuss about it from producers who can’t seem to reel out enough of it; fuss from consumers who seem to be lapping it up; and fuss from critics who think it’s either unhygenic or else think it’s emblematic of “...the need to exert power and influence.”

Updated: I love it when non-sex bloggers get their dander up without going all sex-negative about it. And really, seriously how much more sex-negative can one get than claims that men have no sexual agency either? Spitzer made complex choices. He went to considerable effort to wire funds around. He had multiple, complex text and phone conversations about combining or paying different outstanding balances. Days in advance he arranged for liasons requiring travel hours to his proposed location. And, most damning to the “men spread seed” whimsy, he requested specific, familiar individuals. I just don’t see any mystery gene that’s magically expressed only in men being responsible for all that.