Scientific study finds that promiscuity is culturally-based. Feminists say, "No kidding."

(x-posted at Women@Brown)

Jezebel had a good post the other day about a new study showing that promiscuity may be more culturally influenced than biologically/evolutionarily. Well, yeah, no kidding. But evolutionary biologists have long held that, based mainly on studies of fruit flies, males are more promiscuous than females. Spreading one's genes is an evolutionary advantage, but producing eggs is more of an investment than insemination, so females tend to have fewer mating partners while males tend to have more. While these findings are undoubtedly important, the subsequent application to human behavior has been, well, problematic. Claiming cultural norms/stereotypes as "natural" tends to lead into dangerous territory, reinforcing expectations of men's and women's roles in society.

However, a new study that actually takes a look at human behavior has shown that "Evidence for sex differences in variation in reproductive success alone does not allow us to make generalizations about sex roles, as numerous variables will influence [previous findings] for men and women." But not only is the notion of promiscuous men and choosy women culturally based, it may also be wrong. While men had more children by different partners than women did overall, number of sexual partners is extremely difficult to measure because people lie about it. The social expectation for men to sleep around and women to want committed relationships tends to make men exaggerate upwards and women exaggerate downwards when surveyed about the number of sexual partners they'd had.

This study is encouraging, because it shows an awareness by the scientific community that humans are embedded in culture - a fact that tends to be ignored in evolutionary biology. On the other hand, Elizabeth Wilson (who gave a talk at the differences colloquium a few weeks ago) got me thinking about the fact that feminism tends to ignore biology, too. To paraphrase Wilson, although nothing can be explained in purely biological terms - especially biology - feminism does need to be more engaged with biology. When we distance ourselves from the scientific community, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot when we could be focused on working through similar issues. And the last thing we want is to show how completely out-of-touch we are by suggesting that fruit fly research is unimportant.

How to engage biology is, of course, the difficult question. But I get discouraged when I end up in arguments with my biology-focused friends about things like the influence of evolution and/or culture on sex and gender, because it gets in the way of our shared commitment to social justice. I make a habit of calling out science out for its assumed objectivity - nothing is purely objective; we don't exist in a vacuum - but the last thing I want to do is alienate it because it isn't self-aware enough. It would be more productive to help it become more self-aware, and then work in conversation with it.