I’m really enjoying reading the sexuality and relationships postings on Noli Irritare Leones. Here she’s assessing a paper called Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions — warning PDF by Baumeister & Vohs after receiving an RFC (oops, Request For Comments.)
It’s hard for me to believe that, in studies like the one in which college students are approached by attractive strangers offering sex, the fact that women turn the men down (while most of the men accept the proposition from the strange woman) has nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility that this random stranger might, after all, be someone who would beat you up or rape you. I mean, obviously it’s not the only consideration, but surely part of the reason you want to know your sex partner first is that you hope you have at least a little ability, on acquaintance, to weed out potential abusers. I doubt men worry as much about their physical safety, on receiving a sexual proposition from a stranger
This is such a lovely counter-explanation for the standard sociobiological explanations for women’s perceived selectivity regarding sex partners. It doesn’t necessarily invalidate sociobiology (which is generally perfectly able to invalidate itself) but it certainly suggests there’s more to be considered than simple comparisons of human sexual behavior to that of to bonobo chimps or blind, microscopic ostensibly-homosexual nematodes.
