It's Not You, It's Biology

Quirk, Joe 2006. It's Not You, It's Biology: The Science of Love, Sex and Relationships. Running Press

Valdkond (umbmääraselt) evolutionary psychology, mitte sociobiology.

Childhood helplessness on korrelatsioonis parental investment-iga. Mida abitum on laps, seda rohkem peavad vanemad hoolt kandma tema eest. Inimese areng on primaatide hulgas kõige pikem, ergo inimesed peavad investeerima lastesse kõige rohkem.

Despite the sperm and egg problem that created radically different breeding strategies, our prolonged childhoods meant we evolved to form intense attachments to whomever we happen to be boffing.
Biologists call this the pair-bond. We’ve institutionalized it as marriage. The bad news is our pair-bond is designed to last for as long as it takes our offspring to reach some level of independence. Genes aren’t designed to make us happy. They design us to make more copies of themselves. To last “until death do us part,” sexual relationships must develop the natural bonds of friendship and affinity that we also evolved on the Pleistocene savanna. How lifelong friendship evolved is a subject we will explore later. (Quirk 2006: 15)

If all the men in the world dropped dead except that pimply teenager at Kinko’s, and women organized a global round-robin to make him repopulate the earth, the young man would heroically shoulder his responsibility to humanity without complaining.
A female would be less excited to be in his position. Anybody who bears the baby is going to want one prime choice for a sperm donor. And the turn-ons are different. A man is attracted to a woman’s ability to grow a baby inside her. A woman is attracted to a man’s ability to grow a baby outside him. How does he do that?
Resources. (Quirk 2006: 26)

"Female macaque monkeys are attracted to power, but even more so to signs of potential power." (Quirk 2006: 27)
"Among all hierarchical primates, females are attracted to ambitious males." (Quirk 2006: 27)

Hominids still displayed their expensive possessions - before SUVs there were seashell necklaces—but what they really wanted was respect. How much crap you owned was less important than how many people wanted to do you a favor. The real natural environment of hominids was less the savanna than the social group. If you were a hominid male, and people paid attention to you, craved our approval, shut up and listened when you spoke, that meant you were a leader. Men who commanded attention commanded access to community support. That meant a good nest-maker. (Quirk 2006: 41-42)

Even among Homo sapiens with our prolonged childhoods, male feelings will be structured to love the primary mate and children, but still be capable of supplemental sex without emotional commitment. Over the millennia, male Homo sapiens evolve to look at some women as potential wives, others as potential concubines. Women’s concern that they are still “respected” after sex suddenly sounds like their genes asking, “Am I a potential wife or concubine?”
This is the female bind. Women know that to entice men, sexual behavior is necessary. Yet they also know that if men perceive them as promiscuous, they may put them in the concubine category and not the wife category. A man’s desire to assure paternit means he is less inclined to invest his resources in a woman who is promiscuous. (Quirk 2006: 51)

Skin with fur likes to be scratched. Skin without fur likes to be caressed. Naked skin on apes is generally reserved for the genitals. Not so for Homo perverto. Our skin stays hairless and baby-like all through our breeding years. We have sexual nerves going to extraneous hot spots all over our bodies, like our inner thighs, the backsn of our knees, our toes, our nipples, our necks. This is all located a long way from our genitals. A Homo sapiens, really, is built to be one giant genital. When you see a naked woman, you’re basically seeing a giant clitoris. Men are dicks, but in a good way. (Quirk 2006: 75)

I define Murphy’s Law as the tendency for humans to notice what doesn’t go right. Let me also define Quirk’s Law: almost everything in civilization is perpetually and simultaneously going right, and nobody will ever notice. (Quirk 2006: 90)

Cross-cultural variability in beauty tastes reveals one constant: prestige is beautiful. Symbols of status change. Attraction to status does not, even if rich teens decide the true mark of status is connection with the gritty streets.Third-world men like ’em fat and fair. Industrialized men like ’em thin and tanned. Whatever symbolizes high status, we try to screw it. (Quirk 2006: 186)