via brown_betty

[marnanightingale]

Special to Creek Running North: Biologists have long assumed that evolutionary psychology, a controversial branch of psychology that ascribes many common social behaviors to genetics, is a muddled blend of half-understood evolutionary biology, selective data mining and resentment of women’s changing roles in society.

A new study, published in today’s issue of the German publication Unwirklichen Genetikjournal, does not challenge that assessment. But it does suggest that some men may be genetically predisposed to believe in evolutionary psychology, a finding that may well suggest future methods of treatment of the psychological malady.

Believers in evolutionary psychology maintain that feminism sets itself in opposition to millions of years of anthropoid evolution, and is thus futile and inhumane to men. Allegations made by believers include references to putative differences in math skills between men and women, a supposedly irresistible but entirely non-visually stimulated female attraction toward powerful and/or arrogant males, and the existence of a genetically preordained male right to multiple female sexual partners.

Many such men hold to these beliefs despite an absolute lack of supporting scientific evidence, says Dr. Ulrike Mann-Esser, chair of the sexual anthropology department at Universität Ulm and the study’s lead researcher. “But we had no way to determine why this was so until last year’s discovery of the locus taedius.”

I'll be over here, on the floor, where I am genetically predisposed to land when a particularly deft skewering of the patriarchy is this funny.

Comments

Meh.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Much of academic feminism sets itself in opposition to evolutionary biology, sticking its collective fingers in its ears and singing "La! La! La! I can't hear you" to uncompromising physiological reality.

But human nature, as my favorite actress is famous for remarking, is what we are put on earth to rise above. Or, as the bard might put it, we may be slightly less than angels, but we are far greater than beasts.

For my money, if you want to civilize mankind's nasty evolutionary habits, knowing what they are and why they work is a fairly helpful thing.